WORRY 

THE DISEASE OF THE AGE 



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WORRY: 

THE DISEASE OF THE AGE 



WORRY: 



THE DISEASE OF THE AGE 



BY 

C. W. SALEEBY, M. D. 

F. R. S. (Edin.) 

Author of " The Cycle of Life," " Evolution the Master-Key' 9 

etc. 



NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

Publishers 



^. 



UBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Cooles Received 

CtASS ^ XXc, No, 
COPY D. 






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Copyright, 1907, 

By Frederick A. Stokes Company. 

Copyright, 1906, 

By Smith Publishing House. 

All rights reserved. 
This edition published in April, 1907, 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



'This Book 
Is dedicated to those whom it may serve 






CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I PAGE 

Its Significance i 

Man looks "before and after," and tends to do so 
more every day — The futility of worry, its relations to 
disease, work, and the religious life — Its cure must be 
psychical. 

CHAPTER II 
The Consequences of Worry 8 

A disease peculiar to man, and most potent in our own 
times — The cause of nervous disease, insanity, alcohol- 
ism, suicide, infection, sleeplessness, and hysteria — The 
seed of much religion. 

CHAPTER III 

Worry and Physical Disease 23 

A description of health, bodily and mental — The fear 
of disease and its consequences — Worry and suscepti- 
bility to disease — Worry lowers resistance — Worry 
and insomnia — Worry and indigestion — Excess of atten- 
tion — Nervousness, organic and functional disease — 
Worry and the general nutrition of the body — Nervous 
debility. 

CHAPTER IV 
Worry in Illness 43 

The power of mind in illness — Explanation of the vis 
medicatrix naturce — The danger of a little knowledge — 
The personality of the physician — He transmits a sense 
of power — Suggestion — The personality of the nurse 
— Worry as a cause of fatigue. 



viii CONTENTS 



CHAPTER V 

Mind and Body — in Health and Disease ... 57 

"The influence of the mind upon the body" — Its 
neglect by contemporary medicine — Quotation from a 
famous old writer on worry — Brief summary of rela- 
tions — Hypnotism and its power — Hypochondria, its 
cure and prevention. 

CHAPTER VI 
Worry and Health of Mind 63 

The hygiene of the mind, the philosophy of holidaying 

— What is a holiday ? — What a holiday is not — To 
holiday is to be free from normal worry— - Hobbies 
and their value — " Hard work" and health of mind — 
Worry contrasted with brain-work — Worry as a cause 
of insanity. 

CHAPTER VII 
Worry and Boredom 80 

Boredom is a sign of high civilisation — It is the half- 
way house to fretfulness. 

CHAPTER VIII 
Insane Worry 85 

Fixed ideas and obsessions, delusions of fear, delu- 
sions of suspicion — " Triple murder and suicide " — 
Melancholia, its causes and treatment — Insane worry, 
its cardinal symptom. 

CHAPTER IX 

Worry, Drugs, and Drink 93 

The charm of drugs — alcohol, tea, coffee, tobacco, opium 

— Stimulants and sedatives — Pseudo-stimulants — 
Drugs and peace of mind — Caffeine, the invaluable 
stimulant — The abuse of hypnotics or narcotics — 
" Narcomania " — Narcotics, including alcohol, false 
friends one and all — The use of caffeine (tea and coffee) 
is justifiable. 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER X 
Worry, Will, and Action in 

The emotions move the will — Worry may paralyc c the 
will — " Nervousness " — Worry and hasty action — 
Worry and irritability — Worry and social efficiency — 
Worry about " getting on/' 

CHAPTER XI 
A Case of Worry 126 

An actual instance — Worry destroyed sleep, produced 
fatigue, injured digestion, lowered the weight, thinned 
the hair — Then the injured body reacted upon the mind, 
produced more worry — A vicious circle. 

CHAPTER XII 
Worry in Childhood 139 

No worry in babyhood — Worry unnatural in childhood 
\ — Fear of ridicule, in boys and girls — Religious worry 
in childhood — Government by fear and by love. 

CHAPTER XIII 
Domestic Worry 153 

Worry and woman — Its effect on the face — Beauty is 
not skin-deep — Worry about servants — Worry about 
children — Means of avoiding it — Boarding-schools — 
/ The duties of motherhood. 

CHAPTER XIV 
Worry and Old Age 174 

Regret — Serene old age — Its rarity — Change in type 
of old age — Religious worry in old age — Fretfulness — 
The remedy — Cultivate the whole maxi — Care of the 
old by the young. 

CHAPTER XV 

Worry and Sex ,. 189 

Blackguardly advertisers — Their lies and the disastrous 
consequences. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER XVI 
The Psychology of Worry 195 

Most worry a disease of the mind, a perversion of the 
supreme faculty of self-consciousness, which is the dis- 
tinguishing character of man — man alone "looks before 
and after " — Animals don't worry, since they live in the 
present alone — Worry thus an emotional state of self- 
consciousness — Worry a fact co-extensive with human 
life, and dependent upon the desire to live — Optimism 
the active opposite of worry — Its nature and varieties. 

CHAPTER XVII 
The Varieties of Worry 209 

Normal and morbid worry — Selfish and unselfish worry 

— Anticipative and retrospective worry — Material and 
spiritual worry. 

CHAPTER XVIII 

The Physical Cures of Worry . . . . . . 214 

The importance of sleep — The production of " organic 
optimism " — Morbid optimism — The " organic sense 
of well-being " — Sound digestion. 

CHAPTER XIX 
Practical Materialism 230 

Philosophic and practical materialism distinguished — 
The modern prevalence of practical materialism — Its 
production of worry — Is life for work or work for life ? 

— Spiritual activity the true activity — The future type 
of society, the " spiritual type " — The ideal is to play 
the game for its own sake. 

CHAPTER XX 
Religious Worry 240 

Worry about sin — The fear of hell — The fear of death 

— Their part in human life in the past and to-day — Their 
decline — The " death agony " — Professor Osier's ob- 
servations — The moral fear of death. 



CONTENTS xi 



CHAPTER XXI 

Worry as a Maker of Religions 257 

" Fear first made the gods " — Delusions about the 
" happy savage " — The " f eare of things invisible " — 
Superstition — Primitive ancestor-worship — Primitive 
" religion " in our own time — Palmistry and crystal- 
gazing — The tragedy of past superstition, and present. 

CHAPTER XXII 

Worry and Prayer 278 

Prayer about material worries, its futility — Prayer about 
spiritual worries, its success. 

CHAPTER XXIII 
The Future of the Race 284 

Unselfish worry about the future — Our duty to the 
future — Our fears about it — Charles Darwin's letter 
— Eugenics. 

CHAPTER XXIV 
The Triumph of Religion 288 

The modern criticism of dogma — The philosophy of 
religion — The triumphs of religion — Professor Hoff- 
ding's book — The permanence of the good — The 
triumph of true religion over death — The death of 
Socrates — The poets' faith — Browning, Shelley, and 
Wordsworth — " To the good man no evil thing can 
happen." 

Index 303 



WORRY 



ITS SIGNIFICANCE 

Our " being's end and aim " is happiness — not 
necessarily the material happiness of the inebriate 
or the epicure, but happiness of some kind, having 
its highest form in the spiritual exaltation of those 
rare souls who, in this world of shadows and half- 
lights, have seen a vision and follow the gleam. 
Thus to worry is to miss the purpose of one's 
being : it is to fail — to fail for self, to fail for 
others, and it is to fail gratuitously. " It is worse 
than a crime, it is a blunder " ; but the blunder is 
almost universal, and is the characteristic symptom 
of an age, which — the laudator temporis acti not- 
withstanding — I believe to be the greatest in 
human history hitherto. To the evolutionist no 
other belief is open. 

6 What a piece of work is a man ! How noble 
in reason! ... in apprehension how like a god! " 
Certainly none has a greater right to praise him 
than his greatest poet. But alas, how significant 
is the change in meaning of one of Hamlet's words. 
When Shakespeare wrote " apprehension," he 



2 WORRY 

meant understanding, but to us, three centuries 
later, the word means worry I To worry, indeed, 
is human: my concern may be with my butcher's 
bill or with the threatened extinction of the sun; 
I may worry for myself or for my child or for my 
creed, but worry, it would seem, I must; and yet 
happiness is my being's end and aim. 

Good and evil, we know, are complementary. 
To love implies the possibility of hate; to look 
before and after, to anticipate, to hope, implies the 
possibility of fear. 

" Yet if we could scorn hate and pride and fear," 
we should live upon a new earth. And men have 
scorned these things ; they have known " that con- 
tent surpassing wealth, the sage in meditation 
found, and walked with inward glory crowned." 
The wise of all ages have been the captains of their 
souls. Of these wise, the wisest few have founded 
great religions which — their substance, not their 
form, accepted — have redeemed many genera- 
tions, and wiped the tears from many eyes. Even 
pagan stoicism has some claim to be counted with 
these. In our own time, as in all preceding times, 
there is necessity, but in our own time it is pre- 
eminent necessity, for the irradiation amongst the 
peoples of that fine temper, half philosophic, half 
religious, half intellectual, half emotional, half 
rational acceptance, half faith — the faith of Soc- 
rates that to the good man no evil thing can happen 
— the temper that possessed the soul of Words- 
worth, who, whilst others were distressed, dis- 



ITS SIGNIFICANCE 3 

heartened, at the betrayal of a patriot, addressed 
him in these great words : 

" There 's not a breathing of the common wind 
That will forget thee ; thou hast great allies ; 
Thy friends are exultations, agonies, 
And love, and man's unconquerable mind," 

In the succeeding chapters it is my purpose ade- 
quately to demonstrate, if possible, the importance 
of worry and of its acuter form, which we call 
fear ; to seek for an analysis of its causes ; and, 
more especially, to discuss the means by which it 
has been controlled, cured, or transfigured in the 
past, and which, well directed and employed, may 
perform a like service for us and our heirs. 

The wisest thinkers of all times have seen that 
worry, apprehension, and fear condemn the many 
to futility, to real or imaginary disease, to prema- 
ture death, to everything that is the negation of 
abundant life. But it is only quite lately that the 
double aspect of the importance of worry has been 
capable of due recognition. It is indeed easy to 
assert in a philosophic way that since it is well to 
be happy, it is ill to fret or fear ; but what has not 
been sufficiently recognised is the importance of 
worry, not merely in itself as implying the absence 
of happiness, but as the cause of ills far greater 
than itself — the cause predisposing to disease 
which would otherwise have been escaped alto- 
gether; the cause determining the fatal issue of 
illnesses which would otherwise have been recov- 
ered from ; a potent cause, probably the most im- 



4 WORRY 

portant of all causes, of sleeplessness; a great 
consumer of the bodily energies, both directly and 
by reason of its effect upon sleep. This brief list is 
very far from exhausting or even adequately sug- 
gesting the physical consequences of worry. It is 
quoted merely as some indication of the influence 
of the mind upon the body, an influence which has 
always been credited, and which unfortunately has 
given rise to innumerable mysticisms and super- 
stitions, but which has only lately, only indeed 
since the destruction of materialism thirty years 
ago, been elevated to the rank of a scientifically 
appraised truth. Worry, then, is not only a disease 
in itself, it is the precursor or predisposing cause 
of many bodily diseases, as also of many mental 
disorders of far greater gravity than its own. But 
this disease, hitherto deemed unworthy of serious 
consideration, is not only potent in influencing the 
health and happiness and accomplishments of those 
whom it affects, but those whom it affects are the 
entire community, with very rare exceptions. I 
have said that the wise of all ages have been the 
captains of their souls — the masters of their fate. 
But the wise of any age are the minority, the 
numerically insignificant minority. Very few of 
us have time for reflection, for philosophic medi- 
tation. The overwhelming majority of men and 
women are unable, usually through no fault of 
their own, to free themselves from this ailment — 
an ailment which, as we shall see when we come 
to consider its causes, is an all but inevitable con- 



ITS SIGNIFICANCE 5 

sequence of the supreme characteristic of the human 
mind, the power of contemplating itself, the past 
and the future. This is thus an ailment which 
plays a more or less malign part in almost every 
life. The variations of its influence are very wide, 
depending largely upon differences of what we 
vaguely call temperament. But I question whether 
there is any life in which it does not have some 
say. One man it may merely prevent from the 
full enjoyment of his work and play. Another 
man it hurts rather in interfering with the quality 
of his work, causing him to make mistakes due to 
over-anxiety or want of sleep. In another case it 
interferes with the sum total of a man's output; 
in yet another and a very frequent case, it inter- 
feres with his domestic happiness or his sociability, 
making him an irritable husband and father and an 
unloved guest. But it would be absurd to attempt 
to discuss here in detail the multitudinous conse- 
quences of worry or to insist upon their many ram- 
ifications. Merely I would insist at the moment 
upon the importance of worry, afterwards to be 
demonstrated, not so much in the melancholic nor 
in persons having vast responsibilities nor at the 
great crises of life, but rather its importance as a 
common, constant, commonplace fact, influencing 
body and mind, in greater or less degree, through- 
out the lives of the ordinary people with ordinary 
affairs, who constitute the overwhelming bulk of 
humanity. 

I have therefore deliberately avoided the more 



6 WORRY 

obvious of the two logical arrangements which 
my chapters might display. I propose to deal not 
first of all with the causes of worry and then with 
its consequences and cure, but first of all with its 
consequences, incidentally with its causes, there- 
after with its cure. This order, however, may be 
logically defended; it corresponds to the defining 
of your subject before you expatiate upon it. First 
of all, we must know what worry is and what it 
signifies to human life; then, since its curableness 
is a matter of history, we must observe the modes 
in which men have cured it, and consider how their 
experience may serve our own need. Also, we 
shall consider the more abstract problem — a prob- 
lem in pure psychology — of the causation of 
worry. From some points of view this is the most 
interesting question of all, but it is interesting only 
because we know how much worry signifies, and 
so our discussion of it need not come first. 

In seeking the fundamental, though not the only 
cure for worry, our guide, I believe, will be the 
closing lines, which I have quoted, of the sonnet 
to Toussaint L'Ouverture. Mind and body, as 
we shall see, are inextricably one, and yet are not 
identical. Primarily, worry is a mental fact, and 
is to be dealt with by mental, not material, means, 
by dogmas rather than by drugs. 

They must be true dogmas, else they cannot 
survive the onslaught of " man's unconquerable 
mind." Yet again, our philosophy must recognise 
that the soul of man has more than its intellec- 



ITS SIGNIFICANCE 7 

tual component; it has "exultations, agonies, and 
love/' These, as well as our mind, our emotions 
as well as our reason, are our friends, if we will 
have them. We shall cure worry neither at the 
cost of our intellectual chastity, as by cozening our- 
selves to believe that which we know to be untrue, 
nor by striving to effect our end with the aid of the 
dry light of reason alone, casting scorn on the 
emotional nature. If we are to live completely 
and throw worry to the dogs, we must honour and 
recognise our complex nature in its completeness. 
The stoicisms have failed because they denied the 
emotions, and the emotionalisms have failed be- 
cause they were opposed to man's mind and the 
truth which it worships. The cures that have en- 
dured, the optimisms that have survived, are those 
which have affronted no essential part of human 
nature, the sufficient vindication for both aspects 
of which, the intellectual and the emotional — for 
the evolutionist, at any rate — is the fact of their 
survival, their survival with increase, their triumph 
indeed, after the supreme test imposed upon them 
for countless ages by the struggle for existence. 



II 

THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 

He that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast. — Prov. 
xv., 15. 

The mind is its own place, and in itself 

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. 

— Paradise Lost. 

The supreme and unique character of the mind 
of man is self-consciousness. This it is which, as 
Hamlet says, makes him a being of " such large 
discourse, looking before and after." If he loses 
it, he ceases to be human. Thus, at bottom, the 
cause of worry is life : its cure is death. To live 
is to care, and therefore necessarily, at times, to 
live is to worry. But the end of life is happiness, 
whether for self or for others, and therefore worry, 
fear and care, though inevitable, are in direct 
opposition to the end for which we live. For what 
do they count in human life? 

The two quotations, one ancient and one mod- 
ern, which I have placed at the head of this chapter, 
indicate clearly enough what must necessarily be 
the case — that the importance of the mind and of 
the manner in which it looks upon life has been 
recognised by the wise of all ages. Before we 
attempt to classify the various states of mind which 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 9 

we are to study : before we consider whether there 
is any worry that may be called normal and neces- 
sary, or study the worry that is the product of 
disease, or ill-health, or the worry of which disease 
is a product, — let us first ask ourselves what this 
fact of worry signifies in human life in our own 
age and civilisation. 

I have called it the disease of the age. This is 
by no means to assert that worry is not, when 
widely defined, a disease of every age. But if we 
consider the psychological condition — self-con- 
sciousness — upon which the possibility of worry 
depends, we shall see that, as evolution advances, 
as man becomes more civilised and more thought- 
ful, as he comes to live less in the present, more in 
the past, and yet more in the future, as his nervous 
system undergoes a higher organisation, becomes 
more delicate and sensitive — in a word, as man 
becomes more self-conscious and therefore more 
human, so he becomes more liable to that disease 
of the mind which is certainly unique in this re- 
spect, that, alone of all human diseases, there is 
no analogy to it whatever in the case of any of the 
lower animals. 

Every access of civilisation increases the im- 
portance of this malady. Printing must have mul- 
tiplied it a hundredfold ; cities, with their pace and 
their competition and their foul air, have done the 
like — and we are all becoming citi-fied, if not 
civilised to-day. I write not for the easy-going 
bucolic who, happy fellow, takes no thought for the 



10 WORRY 

morrow, realising that sufficient unto the day are 
the evil and the good thereof; nor do I write for 
any other whom the swirling tide of the evolu- 
tionary struggle has passed by, to lead a quiet life 

— quiet but insignificant for the future of the race 

— far from the madding crowd. I write for those 
to whom the struggle for existence is a stern ne- 
cessity — those who have others dependent upon 
them: those who fear forty and grey hair, and 
death and consumption and cancer; and, beyond 
all these, " the dread of something after death/' 
And I submit that worry is pre-eminently the 
disease of this age and of this civilisation, and 
perhaps of the English-speaking race in particular. 

We do well to be " strenuous," we do well to 
" strive and agonise," we do well to know the dis- 
content that is divine, that precious seed of insur- 
rection, of which all progress is the fruit. We do 
well to think of the morrow. Far be it from me 
to suggest that we should emulate the modern 
Spaniard or Greek or Italian. To renounce the 
struggle for life is not really to live, but to vege- 
tate. But we must pay the price — and indeed we 
are doing so. 

Year by year, worry and fear and fretting 
increase the percentage of deaths that are self- 
inflicted — surely the most appalling of all com- 
ments upon any civilisation. Year by year, men 
and women show their need for psychic help by 
the invention of new religions, every one of which, 
in so far as it brings peace and content of mind, 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 11 

has a serious claim upon the respect of the phi- 
losopher. Year by year we seem more steadily to 
lose our fathers' faith that " underneath are the 
Everlasting Arms." And we turn to Christian 
Science and the Higher Thought and Psycho- 
Therapeutics and Occultism and Materialism, or 
to sheer Epicureanism ( " Let us eat and drink, for 
to-morrow we die ") — to arms that are shortened 
and cannot save. 

Meanwhile, all experts tell us that the struggle 
for existence is becoming too severe and is telling 
upon the mind of the race. In olden days men 
fought with their muscles or their teeth, directly 
and indirectly. The prizes of life and survival 
went to him who had the strongest teeth and the 
most vigorous digestion, or to him who was the 
fleetest or wiriest. Those who were beaten in such 
competition had indeed to do without the lion's 
share. But a beaten muscle is merely beaten: it 
is as good as it was, and probably better. 

Not so with the beaten mind. Infinitely higher 
in organisation — or rather in the organisation of 
the nervous system on which it depends — the 
beaten mind is much more than beaten : it tends to 
undergo vital injury. Unlike a muscle, it can 
recognise or brood over its own loss or disgrace. 
" In ten years," says a prophet of evil, " the hos- 
pitals will be on the rates." He is a Cassandra, I 
fear — whose prophecies came true. Yet the death 
rate from the filth diseases falls every year. Thank 
goodness our wise fathers wisely worried over 



12 WORRY 

sanitation. Every condition, however, which elim- 
inates the physical in the struggle for existence 
merely increases the importance of the psychical; 
for there is no discharge in that war. Hence, the 
more we control infectious diseases and the like, 
the greater is the strain which we throw upon those 
psychical instruments with which the struggle for 
life is now waged. In olden days some could not 
stand the physical strain: they had to work long 
hours for poor gain and early graves. Nowadays 
many cannot stand the psychical strain. They 
are injured partly by fatigue, partly by worry. It 
is a proved and accepted physiological truth that 
the adult is much more gravely injured by worry 
than by fatigue. Hence our nerve doctors are kept 
busy. Hence the incessant discovery of new ner- 
vous diseases. 

Of these, two explanations are possible. One is, 
that observers in the past were not acute and skil- 
ful enough to detect them. But this is on the face 
of it incredible. Men of the stamp of Sydenham 
had trained powers of clinical observation which 
probably no physician of the present day can rival. 
On the contrary, it is generally admitted that the 
introduction of new (and immensely important) 
methods into medicine, such as all those which 
depend upon the discovery of microbes, has gravely 
tended to lessen our skill in clinical observation. 
The only reasonable explanation of these new 
nervous diseases is that they are new. I believe 
that on this point Dr. Max Nordau is undoubtedly 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 13 

correct. Their victims represent the consequences 
to society and to the individual of the increasing 
strain to which the nervous organisation of men is 
now subjected. And I repeat that the general 
truth, long recognised by wise men, that nothing 
kills so surely as care, has now received physiolog- 
ical confirmation. These patients are not the vic- 
tims of over-work as such. I very much question 
whether mere mental over-work ever killed or 
injured anybody. Amid the chaos of error and 
fallacy which embodies the popular conception of 
insanity — as of all other subjects — we may find 
a fairly definite impression that mental " over- 
work 9i is the cause of much insanity and pre- 
mature decay. Now let me assert, as dogmatically 
as words will permit, that this is the most arrant 
nonsense, unsupported by facts or logic. The case 
is simply not so. Do you beg to differ ? Well, look 
up any text-book on insanity, or neurology, or 
make arrangements for studying the facts of 
asylums; thereafter you will agree with what is 
not an individual opinion of mine but a simple 
statement of scientific truth. Brain-work — as 
such — never killed or harmed anybody. Brain- 
work in a stuffy room will kill you of tuberculosis, 
brain-work plus worry has killed thousands, brain- 
work plus worry plus insomnia many thousands 
more, but if the brain-work had been omitted the 
impure air or the worry and the consequent loss 
of sleep would have had just the same result. If 
you are prepared to believe a simple assertion that 



14 WORRY 

you hear or read this year, pray believe me, for this 
is a matter of personal, national and planetary con- 
sequence, as we shall see. 

I have passed from nervous disease, as ordi- 
narily understood, to insanity, but surely it scarcely 
needs to be said at this time of day that the transi- 
tion is merely from one part of the same subject 
to another. Mental disease, in a word, is physical 
disease or nervous disease, and there is no mental 
disease that is not. If obscure paralyses and losses 
of muscular control or muscular co-ordination are 
increasing, so also, it must unfortunately be ad- 
mitted, are diseases of the mind as that term is 
usually understood. For some years I have tried 
to do my share in attempting to relieve the public 
mind on this score. To infer that insanity was 
increasing, merely because the number of the cer- 
tified insane was increasing, and increasing out 
of proportion to the natural increase of the popu- 
lation, was a worthless argument. A great meas- 
ure of the apparent increase of insanity is only 
apparent — due to the fact that a larger proportion 
of the insane are nowadays certified as such and 
treated in asylums or homes. This results partly 
from increased public confidence in such places, 
partly from the increase in all varieties of accom- 
modation. But, even when these considerations 
are fully allowed for, it appears to be certain that 
insanity is increasing amongst us. Recent articles 
on this subject in the Times have drawn very nec- 
essary attention to it. How, then, are we to ac- 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 15 

count for the " growth of insanity " ? — and even 
if it be not growing, it is by universal admission 
pre-eminently a disease of civilisation, and is al- 
ready formidable enough in all conscience. 

Unquestionably we must recognise that insanity 
is in no small measure a consequence or symptom 
of what I have called the disease of the age. But, 
without emphasising the obvious, I would pass on 
to consider those many causes of mental disorder 
which are not commonly looked upon or treated 
as cases of insanity. The medical profession knows 
these as " borderland cases." They exhibit neither 
sanity nor insanity as these terms are generally 
understood; but furnish living instances of the 
absurd fallacy which leads us to imagine that men 
can be classified like cheeses, into this brand and 
that. Between complete sanity and complete in- 
sanity there are all conceivable stages, and of all 
such stages many instances everywhere — whereas 
probably of complete sanity or complete insanity it 
would be difficult to find ten specimens in as many 
years. The most that can be said of many of us is, 
as Stevenson puts it, " Every man has a sane spot 
somewhere." The recognition of these borderland 
cases and of the problem which they present is 
urgently required by society; that their number is 
increasing, and rapidly, I suppose no one would 
dream of questioning. Without any desire to 
magnify my office or to seek for simple but false 
explanations, I am willing to assert that worry, 
directly and indirectly, plays an enormous and 



16 WORRY 

constantly increasing part in the production of 
these cases. 

Very commonly worry acts indirectly. The un- 
fortunate seeks to drown his care in drink, to stifle 
it with morphia or to transmute it with cocaine. A 
noteworthy fact of the day is the lamentable in- 
crease of self-drugging, not only amongst men but 
also amongst women — the mothers of the race 
that is to be. Alcohol and morphia and cocaine, 
sulphonal, trional, and even paraldehyde; these, 
and many other drugs are now readily — far too 
readily — accessible for the relief of worry and of 
that sleeplessness which, as a symptom of worry 
and as a link in the chain of lamentable events to 
which worry leads, must hereafter be carefully 
dealt with. These are friends of the falsest, one 
and all, as none know better than their victims. 
Hence borderland cases, misery, suicide, and death 
incalculable. There are no causes of worry so 
potent as foolish means for relieving it. To this 
vastly important matter I must return in a chapter 
devoted to it. J 

As the belief in dogmatic religion undergoes that 
decline which, whether for good or for evil, is un- 
questionably characteristic of our time, the im- 
portance of worry increases. A recent writer has 
shown how the increase in suicide is correlated 
with religious belief and disbelief. In European 
countries the proportion of suicide is least where 
the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches prevail, 
and highest amongst the Protestants. The num- 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 17 

ber in Paris, as compared with those in all France, 
is enormous — " the irreligious city in a partially 
religious country. Italy and Spain are examples 
of less suicide in countries where Roman Cathol- 
icism yet holds her own, but Italy has begun to 
think while Spain remains priest-trammelled, and, 
therefore, the Italian average is twice as high. 
Germany and Switzerland, having very high num- 
bers, may indicate the mental unrest in countries 
where two religions clash. 

' Protestantism — a term here inclusive of 
Lutheran, Calvinist, and other forms — invariably 
has a high number as compared with Greek and 
Roman Catholic churches; this probably points to 
the dark and hopeless Calvinistic principle of pre- 
destination, and also to the need of guidance in 
mental disquietude, the divine touch of human 
sympathy, of which every soul at some time is in 
need, being met, more or less well, by the system 
of confession." * 

But the increase of suicide is merely the most 
complete and important result of the decline of 
dogmatic religion as an antidote to worry. Many 
lives are blighted by doubt or sorrow or fear for 
which, five hundred years ago, the Church would 
have provided a remedy. Hence it is unquestion- 
ably true that the consequences of worry, both as 
an individual and a social phenomenon, become 
more apparent as men tend to pass further and 
further from beliefs and practices — such as pri- 

1 Miss C. F. Yonge, in the International Journal of Ethics. 



18 WORRY 

vate and family prayer — against which worry 
has often been powerless to prevail in times past. 

The consequences of worry in relation to ordi- 
nary physical disease are familiar to every physi- 
cian. Not a few non-infectious diseases are known 
which seem frequently to be predisposed to by 
worry. Amongst these are gout, diabetes, and a 
certain form of goitre. My friend Dr. Schofield is 
of opinion that worry about cancer, in any particu- 
lar site, may actually determine its occurrence 
there; but personally I am unable to share this 
opinion. 

Directly we turn, however, to infectious diseases, 
the facts are seen to be evident and indisputable. 
All kinds of infection which depend upon lowering 
of the standard of general health are unquestion- 
ably predisposed to by worry. We know now that 
in the case of such a disease as consumption the 
microbe is encountered by every one. Those pass 
on unscathed who can resist it. That the bodily 
resistance is definitely affected by the state of mind 
— and notably, in the case of nurses and doctors, 
for instance, by the fear of infection — no one who 
is acquainted with the facts can for a moment ques- 
tion. In other words, worry about disease is a 
predisposing cause of disease, and so is worry 
about anything whatever. It is the repeated lesson 
of experience that, other things being equal, infec- 
tious disease tends to seize upon those who fear it 
and to pass over those who keep their flag flying. 
The nurse or doctor or relative who knows that the 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 19 

disease is infectious, and who has always feared its 
name, does, in point of fact, more frequently suc- 
cumb than he or she who takes no thought for self 
at all. 

As a direct cause of the kinds of nervous disease 
which we call functional, worry is, of course, all- 
important. Many people cannot sleep because they 
worry about their inability to sleep. The more 
vigorously such persons set themselves to coax 
sleep — meanwhile becoming more apprehensive 
of failure — the more likely does failure become. 
The case is notoriously the same with nervous dys- 
pepsia. Indeed, any part or function of one's body 
is apt to become disordered if we pay it too much 
attention. The higher part of the nervous system, 
that which is associated with consciousness, is wise 
when it leaves the lower levels to do their own 
business in their own way. 

Hysteria in all its many forms seems to be in- 
creasing, and worry is one of its most potent 
causes. The patient has lost his or her power of 
volition. As Sir James Paget puts it, " the patient 
says ' I cannot ' ; her friends say ' she will not ' ; 
the truth is she cannot will." In other words, she 
has lost her self-confidence. But space does not at 
present avail for considering, at this moment, the 
value of self-confidence as an attribute of self- 
consciousness. Suffice it to observe that worry and 
self-confidence cannot co-exist. 

If proof of the power of the mind in relation to 
hysteria and all forms of functional nervous dis- 



20 WORRY 

ease be desired, the mere progress of Christian 
Science will provide it. Christian Science, which 
we must afterwards discuss, is increasing and is 
even threatening, as Mark Twain declares, to be- 
come the dominant religion, because it meets a real 
need. It teaches that to worry and to fear must 
be attributed all the ills that flesh is heir to. And 
this is true of such an amazing proportion of these 
ills that Christian Science cures them. The reli- 
gion that has this kind of survival value will sur- 
vive, and is quite independent of the good luck 
which I, for one, wish it. That the thing must be 
purged of quackery and of the lies with which it 
abounds is certainly true. But this must not blind 
us to a recognition of the great truth which, how- 
ever unworthily Christian Science enshrines it, as- 
suredly is as true as it was nineteen hundred years 
ago, " Thy faith hath made thee whole." That 
there is or may be a true religion, though I am a 
professed student of science, I do assuredly believe. 
Such a true religion will recognise, as religion ever 
has recognised with less or greater admixture of 
falsity, that faith is a supreme power. 

The relations of religion and worry are most 
singular and striking. The true religion and the 
truths perceived by present and past religion are 
cures of worry and preventives of its consequences. 
On the other hand, many religions have been 
causes of worry, laying stress upon the sinfulness 
of sin, and the doctrine of future punishment, and 
immeasurably increasing the fear of death. Yet, 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 21 

again, since we are here summarising the conse- 
quences of worry, we have to name religion itself, 
in many of its aspects, as one of these. I will ven- 
ture on the generalisation that most religions show 
signs of having been produced in order to relieve 
and avert worry — whether about the past or the 
future, life or death, this world or the next. Many 
a mighty fane, many a mighty church, testifies to 
the means which man has consciously or uncon- 
sciously adopted in order to meet the needs created 
by his unique psychical characteristic, the recog- 
nition of the self, and of the past, and of the 
future. 

For, after all, the worth of life is to be estimated, 
whatever materialists of a certain school may 
think, by one criterion alone. Human life is worth 
living, not in virtue of great discoveries or empires 
or banking accounts, or armies or navies or cities. 
" Only in the consciousness of individuals is the 
worth of life experienced " : it may do for the ants 
and the bees to achieve mere social efficiency, but 
this, as such, is nothing in the eyes of self-conscious 
man. In the words of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, " every man is entitled to life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness." When one dares to 
mention happiness as the end of life, foolish people 
commonly speak as if one were thinking of race- 
courses or low music-halls, or wine, or worse. But 
the word happiness, as used in the Bible and other 
classics, has no such base meaning — " But and if 
ye suffer for righteousness' sake happy are ye." 



22 WORRY 

There is no human end but happiness, high or low. 
Its one absolute negation is neither poverty nor ill- 
health, nor material failure, nor yet starvation — 
" he that is of a merry heart hath a continual 
feast." The one absolute negation of happiness is 
worry or discontent. A prosperous society, con- 
sisting of strenuous worried business men who 
have no time to play with their children, or listen 
to great music, or gaze upon the noble face of the 
sky, or commune with the soul from which we 
have quoted above, and of which another poet, 
Wordsworth, said that it was " like a star and 
dwelt apart " — such a society may be as efficient 
as a bee-hive, as large as London and as wealthy, 
but it stultifies its own ends, and would be better 
not at all. " Better is an handful with quietness 
than both the hands full with travail and vexation 
of spirit." 

Such, in brief, are the main consequences of 
worry which, in a word, is the negation of all that 
makes life worth living. As I believe that life is 
worth living, or may be, I propose to consider the 
matter further hereafter. 



Ill 

WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 

One should not use such a term as disease with- 
out an attempt to define it, and this I propose to do 
by as brief a description as possible of its opposite 
— ease, or health. 

So accustomed are the majority of people to a 
standard of their own which custom has led them 
to regard as normal, that any plain statement of 
what constitutes real health will perhaps be re- 
garded as too rigid and overdrawn. Neverthe- 
less, it surely seems reasonable to assert something 
like the following as the condition of health. The 
reader will notice that I do not include any esti- 
mate as to the number of foot-pounds of work that 
a healthy man should be able to perform in a day, 
or as to the number of hours that he should be able 
to spend in intellectual labour. These things de- 
pend upon a thousand factors, varying in almost 
every individual. Of such variations my definition 
of health will take no heed. I am not satisfied with 
the definition of health as freedom from disease. 
That affords me no more visible enlightenment than 
the proposition that disease may best be defined as 
a departure from the state of health. But without 
drawing upon my imagination, or attempting to 



: 



24 WORRY 

set any standard that is not realised by many per- 
sons, I will offer some such description as the fol- 
lowing, of the man whom I regard not necessarily 
as robust or energetic, but merely as well. My 
concern here is not with what we call rude health, 
but merely with health. 

When the healthy man wakes in the morning he 
should have no recollection of any state of partial 
or entire consciousness later than, say, half an hour 
after he went to bed the night before; that is to 
say, his sleep has been unbroken, continuous, com- 
plete : if he has had any dreams at all, he has, at 
any rate, no recollection of them. This is the kind 
of sleep that refreshes a healthy animal, and that 
is possible for a healthy man. The sleep that is 
broken or that is not readily attained when the hour 
comes and light is banished, is so, not because it 
is in the inherent nature of human sleep to be 
broken, but because there has been too much strain, 
either upon the brain or the stomach, or both, be- 
fore sleep was sought. We need say no more upon 
this subject at present. * Having waked as one 
really should do, because one has slept enough, and 
not because it is time to get up, and an earlier 
riser has told one so — the healthy man wants to 
be up and doing. That is a sign of health which 
I admit very nearly entails an effort of my imagin- 
ation. Nevertheless, this should be so. One should 
wake because one has slept long enough and should 
no more want to lie abed than one wants to be in 
prison. \The healthy man's next business is to per- 



WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 25 

form his toilet without delay, for he is hungry, and 
has visions of breakfast. This over, his concern, 
like that of the two kings in the " Gondoliers,'' is 
to proceed without delay to the business of the day. 
This business may be great or small, mental or 
physical, long or short; but he leaves it with a 
surplus of energy, in disposing of which by a happy 
paradox he recreates himself. I will not dogmatise 
as to whether he should walk, or play with his 
children, or read; but I am sure that the healthy 
man has more energy to dispose of every day than 
he is compelled to dispose of. At some time or 
other during the day he indulges in work or play 
of his own choosing. If, like most of us, he has 
compulsory work, and leaves it ready only for din- 
ner and bed, he cannot hope to answer to my 
description, for he is over-worked, and if over- 
worked he cannot be healthy. His work done, and 
contented with his recreation, my model man goes 
to bed. I have already said how long he takes to 
get to sleep, and what sort of sleep it is that he 
gets. During the whole of his conscious day his 
health has been marked not only by positive 
achievement, but by certain negations. Bored he 
may have felt, perhaps, but never weary. He has 
had no pains of any kind, neither headache nor 
backache, nor any other. Throughout the entire 
day, he has been totally unconscious of his own 
person and of all its parts, save incidentally, as 
when washing and dressing. He has never once 
thought about his digestion, and all the informa- 



26 WORRY 

tion that he can afford on that score would amount 
simply to this : that at intervals during the day he 
deposited certain pleasant materials in the largest 
aperture of his face, but that of their subsequent 
history he has no record whatever. As for his 
tongue, he does not remember ever having seen it. 

The reader will freely grant, I fear, that if this 
be health, there be many who know it not. Yet 
after all, I have described nothing that is not pos- 
sible, nothing that requires a unique brain, or 
Herculean muscles, or even exceptional inherited 
vigour. The question arises for every individual, 
how much work he is capable of doing whilst at the 
same time conforming to this standard. One may 
be able to do only four hours' work without defect 
somewhere in sleep or digestion or internal sen- 
sations. Another man regularly does three times 
as much. But whatever the amount of work the 
man does, he is certainly departing from health 
if his daily history does not answer to my de- 
scription. 

Now, when there is set a standard so severe, yet 
after all so entirely reasonable, we begin to realise 
the enormous total measure of ill-health — chronic 
continuous ill-health — that is to be found in any 
civilised community of to-day. Perhaps the ma- 
jority of the people who suffer are unconscious of 
their disability. Many of them have known no 
other state since they were children, and have come 
to regard their present state as normal and not 
unsatisfactory. Nevertheless their health is imper- 



WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 27 

feet, and though they may continue for years in 
such a state, and though it may by no means evi- 
dently shorten life, yet it alters the whole com- 
plexion of the lives of only too many. Evidently, 
therefore, we must return to this subject when we 
come to consider the Physical Cures of Worry. 
Having recognised the existence of minor ill-health 
as one of its most important causes, we must con- 
sider whether this cause cannot be removed (see 
Chap. XVIII., " The Physical Cures of Worry "). 
If the desirable state above described be health, 
it is little wonder that, as we know, the fear of 
disease is a kind of worry that has played a part 
in men's minds since the earliest times. The his- 
tory of medicine was, until quite recent times, the 
history of a superstition, and the superstitious be- 
liefs and practices to which worry about disease 
has given rise are without number. Of late years 
we have come to a rational understanding of dis- 
ease, and the manner in which we worry about 
it has undergone corresponding modification. No 
longer do we conceive disease as hurled upon us 
by an avenging providence, nor by outraged and 
slighted divinity. Nor do we any longer believe 
in the evil eye, nor in the pestilent influence of bad 
air, such as has coined for us the name of the 
disease " malaria." Nowadays we universally ac- 
cept the germ theory of disease. We know that an 
overwhelming proportion of all disease is due to 
the fact that the world is inhabited by a host of 
invisible creatures, many of which have need of 



28 WORRY 

man's body as their host and diet. We believe that 
these creatures are not generated in the body, but 
enter it from without; and we see that our busi- 
ness, if we would be free from disease, is to obviate 
such entrance, which we call infection. We thus 
have a very definite process to worry about, and 
only too many must do so to much purpose. 

The purpose served, however, is not our own, 
but that of the microbes which we fear. Let us 
consider the curious but true proposition that worry 
about a given disease may be the deciding factor 
whereby it is enabled to attack and even to slay us. 

When first the microbic origin of disease was 
discovered, the problem of infection seemed to be 
a simple one; if you met the microbe you suc- 
cumbed, if not you went free. But nowadays we 
know that the case is by no means so simple. The 
bacilli of tuberculosis are now known to be scarcely 
less than ubiquitous. They must repeatedly gain 
entrance to the throat and air passages of every 
city dweller. More alarming still, the discovery of 
the bacillus of diphtheria has led us to the remark- 
able conclusion that the immediate and exciting 
and indispensable cause of this terrible disease is 
apparently a normal inhabitant of the mouth and 
throat of many healthy people. Not so long ago 
this last proposition would have seemed to imply 
that such a bacillus could not possibly be the cause 
of this disease. But we are discovering that the 
microbe of pneumonia may similarly be found in 
the throats of healthy people. The doctors and 



WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 29 

nurses who work in hospital wards containing cases 
of the three diseases I have mentioned and many 
others, are quite frequently found to have abun- 
dant supplies in their mouths and noses of the 
causal organisms. 

It is plain, therefore, that there must be another 
factor than merely the presence of the seed in the 
production of any case of disease, and plainly that 
factor must be the suitability of the soil. The char- 
acters of the human soil in relation to any disease 
are expressed by the correlative terms, immunity 
and susceptibility. It is now known to be not 
enough that the seed be sown. It may die ; it may 
be killed where it falls. 

The whole problem of immunity is perhaps the 
most complicated and obscure in the whole field 
of the medical sciences. It varies in different cases 
according to a thousand circumstances ; age, race, 
temperature, diet, habits, previous attacks, the 
strain of microbes, and so on. Of these circum- 
stances there is one which, though of great impor- 
tance, is entirely ignored by bacteriologists. I 
am not acquainted with any work on immunity — 
not even that which has lately been published by 
Professor Metchnikoff — wherein the importance 
of the mind in relation to infectious disease is duly 
recognised. It is true that experiment cannot be 
made upon this subject; it is true also that no ex- 
actitude can be hoped for in its study. But though 
we are confined to more or less casual observation, 
and though we cannot express these consequences 



30 WORRY 

of mental state in terms of the reactions per kilo- 
gram of rabbit, we may be assured that the mind 
does play a most important part in determining 
whether or not an individual shall suffer from a 
given disease. Doubtless, infectious diseases may 
be divided for convenience into two classes. There 
are some, such as malaria in the case of the white 
man and measles in the case of every child, to 
which the individual must succumb, so soon as he 
encounters the microbes upon which they depend. 
In such cases we must admit that the influence of 
the mind, if it has any place at all, is practically 
negligible. But on the other hand, we know that 
there is a large number of diseases, susceptibility 
to which is determined by the general health, as we 
may conveniently if vaguely term it; so long as 
we conform to a certain standard of vigour we may 
harbour the tubercle bacillus, the diphtheria bacil- 
lus, and the pneumococcus in our mouths and suffer 
no harm. Doubtless they multiply but slowly, and 
live either upon one another or upon the secretions 
of the mucous membrane near which they lie; at 
any rate, they make no inroads upon the living 
tissues. But if there comes a chill or a bout of 
drunkenness, or an attack of influenza, or any other 
devitalising factor, the resistance of the individual 
is diminished, and he may well fall before the 
attacks of microbes which he has housed for months 
without hurt. In the case of such diseases, then, 
it would appear that it is simply the general vital- 
ity or lack of vitality that determines immunity or 
susceptibility. 



WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 31 

The reader will draw for himself the obvious 
conclusion. If there be diseases which depend for 
their instance upon failure of general health — the 
exciting microbic causes being unable to act save 
with the co-operation of predisposing causes — 
then it is plain that any factor which lowers the 
general health may turn the scale in favour of the 
attacking forces. Now, if there is one fact more 
indisputable than another, it is that worry is able 
to weaken the bodily defences. It was care that 
killed even the nine-lived cat. 

Whenever it is possible, I dearly love to support 
a proposition by distinct lines of argument — the 
argument which asserts that the proposition must 
be true because it necessarily follows from other 
propositions assumed to be true, and the more 
properly scientific argument that the proposition is 
true because when we come to look at the facts 
they confirm it. Now by the first or a priori 
method, we have already convinced ourselves, I 
think, that if the accepted theories of disease be 
correct, worry about disease must necessarily be a 
predisposing cause of disease. But it is also pos- 
sible to quote the evidence of experience and ob- 
servation in support of this proposition. 

I must insist upon the manner in which I have 
qualified this statement. It is impossible to assert 
that lack of fear will protect an unvaccinated per- 
son from smallpox. In such a case, immunity and 
susceptibility depend not at all upon the general 
health, but exclusively upon the circumstance 



32 WORRY 

whether the threatened individual has or has not 
previously suffered from the disease or any of its 
modifications. The role of worry in the causation 
of infectious disease is confined entirely to those 
diseases which depend for their power upon failure 
of general health. Worry acts not in any mystical 
fashion, but merely in virtue of its effect upon 
general vitality, and if the state of the general 
vitality be irrelevant, as it appears to be in the case 
of a large number of diseases, then worry must 
count for very little, one way or another. This 
admission does not at all prejudice the fact that in 
a very large number of instances worry counts for 
a great deal in this connection. 

But when we have exhausted the consideration 
of worry and fear in relation to diseases of micro- 
bic origin, we are very far indeed from having 
reached the end, for we have yet to consider the 
innumerable diseases or disordered conditions of 
the nervous system, and these, as might be ex- 
pected, are profoundly affected by worry. 

It must not be supposed that all we have here 
to say is simply that if one worries long enough 
about a nervous disease the worry will be justified 
at last. For, let us take the instance of the modern 
curse of sleeplessness. It is the fact that worry 
about sleep, as distinguished from worry about 
one's affairs, is in itself sufficient only too often to 
cause a sleepless night. In attempting to control 
a case of sleeplessness, nothing is of more impor- 
tance than, if possible, to restore the patient's con- 



WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 33 

fidence in his power to sleep. Only too many 
people, whose sleep tends to be uncertain, begin to 
worry about their prospects directly they get into 
bed, and their apprehension justifies itself. 

The case is the same with many other nervous 
functions, as, for instance, digestion. The more 
conscious attention one pays to it, the less likely is 
it to succeed. 

Indeed, we may now recognise a general truth 
which is of very great psychological interest : that, 
in general, those bodily processes and functions 
which are under the control of the lower levels of 
the nervous system are best performed when those 
lower levels are left undisturbed by orders from 
above. This is true, not only of such functions as 
sleep and digestion, but also of other functions 
which, at one time in the history of the individual, 
have required the most direct and painstaking 
efforts of conscious attention. This is conspicu- 
ously true of various games and arts. When play- 
ing billiards, for instance, the trained organism 
may be trusted to perform simple strokes, almost 
automatically. If the player begins to devote too 
much attention to them, he is the more likely to fail. 
But the most conspicuous instance of my proposi- 
tion is furnished by singing. It is the common ex- 
perience of, I suppose, every singer that he is 
capable of attacking and sustaining without diffi- 
culty, provided that he be unaware of their pitch, 
notes which, as a rule, he does not dare to essay. 
A bass singer knows, for instance, that his upper 

3 



> 



34 WORRY 

limit of comfort is E; if he knows that there is 
an F coming he begins to worry about it, and often 
pays the penalty. But if a song which he usually 
sings in E major be played for him without his 
knowledge in F, he will take the upper tonic with 
ease, simply because he thinks it is E. Similarly, 
in the case of variations in pitch between different 
pianos; if one has a piano of the sensible French 
pitch one does not venture on an F, but will easily 
take an E elsewhere, though as a matter of fact it is 
almost identical with the F, on which one never 
ventures at home. 

This suffices to illustrate the proposition that 
excess of attention — and this is an accurate defi- 
nition of certain kinds of worry- — interferes at 
least as markedly as carelessness with the perform- 
ance of many subconscious or semi-automatic acts. 
In the case of sleep and digestion, we cannot pay 
too little attention. In the case of organised com- 
pound acts, like violin playing and singing, a 
measure of attention is necessary, but directly that 
measure is exceeded and the consciousness becomes 
too eager (which means that it begins to worry) 
failure is imminent. But every one who knows 
anything about executive art or sport knows the 
difference between performing with confidence and 
without it. 

This digression will suffice abundantly to prove 
that the behaviour of the nervous system, whether 
in relation to the necessary functions of life, or 
to its arts and sports, is capable of very great 



WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 35 

modification by means of the mere direction of 
consciousness thereto. In its popular meaning, the 
word self-consciousness precisely signifies that ex- 
cess of attention to self, always with the emotional 
tone of apprehension or worry, which so often leads 
to failure. " Nervousness " again, in its popular 
meaning, implies a similar emotional tone, and 
we all know its consequences. Now, if we once 
admit the fact that the functions of the nervous 
system are somehow modifiable by the mere direc- 
tion of consciousness to them, it must necessarily 
follow that worry about any nervous function may 
cause disease. Such disease, for convenience, we 
may call a disease of function or a functional dis- 
ease, and in point of fact the distinction between 
organic and functional nervous diseases is every- 
where recognised by neurologists. From every 
point of view, practical and theoretical alike, the 
distinction is one of the first importance, and we 
cannot begin to make any progress in our study of 
the relations of worry to disease until we have the 
clearest possible conception of the difference between 
these two great classes of nervous disorder. 

With the general structure of his nervous sys- 
tem the reader is doubtless familiar. A cerebro- 
spinal axis, consisting of brain and spinal cord 
continuous with it; a series of nerves passing to 
and from all but the highest portions of this axis ; 
and a broad division of nervous tissues into cellu- 
lar or grey matter, and conducting or white mat- 
ter, every such conducting fibre being really a 



36 WORRY 

linear continuation of a nerve cell — these are the 
outline facts of the nervous system. It is a material 
structure or complex of structures, to be handled, 
seen, or eaten, as in the case of the brain of the 
calf. And though the anatomy of the nervous 
system is a matter for many volumes, we may say 
that, even in the minute anatomy of the nerve cell, 
there is nothing which does not or might not con- 
ceivably yield to patient and expert study. As far 
as the anatomist is concerned, the nervous system 
of a Shakespeare or a Newton is simply so much 
matter arranged in a certain way. However com- 
plex the arrangement, there is nothing in it which 
suggests itself to be inherently insoluble. 

Nor does the morbid anatomist or pathologist 
find anything at which his intellect chokes in his 
study of the nervous system. He simply finds 
matter in the wrong place : a clot of blood pressing 
a volitional tract and causing paralysis or speech- 
lessness; a thickened projection of bone pressing 
upon a certain area and depriving it of its function ; 
a fluid accumulation in the cavities of the brain 
causing a hydrocephalus — and so on. You may 
spend a lifetime on this study and be a learner at 
the end of it; but you will never be brought up 
sharply at a problem the terms of which you can- 
not even frame. Your difficulties, like those of the 
anatomist proper, are at any rate never unthinkable. 

Of these " gross lesions " of the nervous system, 
then, much is definitely known. They are respon- 
sible for what we call organic disease of the ner- 



WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 37 

vous system, meaning thereby that there is some 
matter of some sort out of place in the material 
organ of our study. And to cure the malady you 
must re-arrange the matter involved, in the normal 
way. This you may roughly do in a few instances 
— as by the removal of a tumour of the brain. 
This may be difficult or impossible; but the prob- 
lem presents no inherent difference from that of 
the watchmaker when, let us say, some dirt has got 
into a watch. It is simply a question of altering 
the position in space of certain portions of matter. 

In contrast with all the organic diseases of the 
nervous system, the neurologist recognises an in- 
definite number of other maladies which he calls 
functional. Morbid anatomy, aided even by the 
microscope and chemistry, reveals nothing in such 
cases. There is no organic change to be discerned, 
but there is disorder of function, which may be, 
and often is, quite as grave as that done by a 
structural change which you could see ten yards 
away, were it exposed. 

Typical of these functional maladies — the num- 
ber of which appears to be constantly undergoing 
addition in civilised communities — is the protean 
disorder which is called hysteria. Despite ety- 
mology, hysteria is met with in both sexes and at 
all ages. It is a reality, to be confused with maling- 
ering or shamming only by those who know 
nothing of it. Though nothing does the hysterical 
patient more harm than sympathy, he is as much 
entitled to it as if he had a cerebral tumour as big 



38 WORRY 

as your fist. But, though to assert the reality of 
hysteria or any other functional disease of the ner- 
vous system is easy, to define its nature is, in the 
last analysis, not only impossible, but as impossible 
as it is to define the relation of mind and matter 
— the unknowable, unf rameable, unthinkable prob- 
lem. The physician may glibly say of his patient's 
malady, " Oh, it is only functional " — but he has 
not solved the ultimate problem with that phrase. 

We cannot believe, indeed, that any " func- 
tional " malady is not the symptom of an organic 
or material change — a change too subtle for any 
of our methods. That we may hold as a pious 
belief; but we possess, with a very different con- 
viction, the knowledge that in the cure of the two 
classes of nervous malady there is a difference as 
profound as the difference between mind and mat- 
ter. This may readily be shown. 

You have before you two persons who are un- 
able to move the right arm — the inability in the 
two cases being identical. The first is a case of 
organic disease. You remove the tumour which 
is pressing on the arm area on the left side of the 
patient's brain, and he regains the use of his arm 
forthwith. The expert who removes an obstacle 
to the movement of your watch performs a pre- 
cisely comparable operation. But the second pa- 
tient has a functional paralysis. You will not cure 
him by altering the position in space of any por- 
tions of matter whatsoever. But if you act on his 
mind — as in the instance of the miracle wrought 



WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 39 

on the Sabbath Day — and say, " Stretch forth 
thine hand," the paralysis is no more. In attempt- 
ing to review an enormous subject in a few lines, 
I may therefore say that in all diseases of the 
nervous system — insanity of every kind included 
— a cure is conceivable by an action on matter or 
an action on mind. 

The piles of crutches at Lourdes indicate real 
cures of real diseases. The cures wrought by 
Christian Science are real cures. Faith-healing is 
a fact. Neither faith nor Mrs. Eddy can remove 
mountains — or kill a bacillus — but mind can act 
on mind. Terrible maladies exist which the united 
wisdom of every physician on the earth might be 
impotent to affect, but which would yield instantly 
and finally to the nonsensical jabbering of an im- 
moral imbecile, if only the patient's mind were 
affected thereby. These are scientific facts, as cer- 
tain and as important as the infectiousness of 
cholera, the germ-causation of tuberculosis or the 
triumphs of Listerian surgery. 

But my assertion of these facts will not delude 
any reader into forgetting the immeasurable dis- 
tinction between a description and an explanation. 
The first we have already, the second would ex- 
plain not only hysteria, but the cosmos in its 
entirety. If Tennyson could say as much of the 
flower in the crannied wall, it may certainly be said 
of an explanation which, in answering one ques- 
tion, would leave none unanswered. 

Having thus attempted to define, as clearly as 



40 WORRY 

possible, the difference between organic and func- 
tional nervous disease, we must now note some 
qualifying considerations which complicate the mat- 
ter in practice. For instance, there is often found 
what we call a functional element superadded to 
cases of organic disease, as in the case of dissem- 
inated sclerosis of the brain and spinal cord. Such 
cases frequently deceive the physician, who is apt 
to regard the disease as entirely functional, because 
of the functional element which it displays, and 
because he is familiar with functional disorders 
which exactly simulate this disease. On the other 
hand, functional disorder by interfering with the 
general nutrition may lead to organic disease, and 
thus introduce the converse complication. Hence 
we find that in practice it is impossible to maintain 
any ultimate distinction between the two classes 
of disease. 

We have already hinted that the distinction be- 
tween malingering or shamming and hysteria is a 
real one. When the patient is pretending to be ill 
his disease is fictitious; when he suffers from hys- 
teria we may describe it as factitious, but none the 
less real therefore. With fictitious disease we have 
here no concern at all. 

I have just used the masculine pronoun, and the 
reader may think it out of place in relation to 
hysteria, but there is such a thing as male hysteria, 
and the derivation from the name of a distinctively 
feminine organ implies a libel upon the gentle sex. 
Doubtless hysteria is more common amongst wo- 



WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 41 

men, but that is all that can be said. No real dis- 
tinction can be maintained between the various 
forms of what it is usually agreed to call hysteria, 
and the countless other forms of functional ner- 
vous disease, and we may consider them all together 
indifferently. Now what are the relations of worry 
to the two classes of nervous disease? 

We may say that worry does not directly cause 
organic disease. I cannot subscribe to the opinion 
that the organic disease (not nervous) called can- 
cer may be induced in any organ by the constant 
fear of its occurrence there. Worry can only cause 
organic disease — such, for instance, as the burst- 
ing of a blood-vessel in the brain — indirectly by 
its influence upon general nutrition. On the other 
hand, worry may, and constantly does, cause func- 
tional nervous disease. We have already seen that 
worry about the possibility of disorder, such as 
sleeplessness, may induce the very disorder in ques- 
tion. But worry about anything, whether in this 
world or the next, is a potent cause of functional 
nervous disease. It is only consistent with this 
fact that such disease should be curable by mental 
influences. It may be fairly argued that, even in 
these cases, the worry may cause the disorder by 
its interference with appetite or sleep or both ; but 
the manner of its operation is not so important as 
the fact that it does so operate. 

We have already said that the distinction be- 
tween organic and functional disease, all important 
though it be, cannot be universally maintained. 



42 WORRY 

An instance of this is now furnished by the com- 
mon disorder which goes by the good name of 
neurasthenia — the Greek for nerve weakness. 
This has gone by various names — general debil- 
ity, nervous debility, nervous exhaustion, l'etat 
nerveux, the vapours, and so on. It is unquestion- 
ably distinct from typical hysteria; yet on the 
other hand it is equally distinct from definite or- 
ganic disease, such as that due to a tumour or a 
haemorrhage, and it is curable in a way in which 
ordinary organic disease is not. 

Both hysteria and neurasthenia are frequently 
caused by worry. In both cases, however, we have 
to recognise that worry, the exciting cause, cannot 
act without the help of a predisposing cause, which 
is very difficult to define, but which is undoubtedly 
a reality. It is a matter of inheritance, and we may 
call it inherited nervous instability, or the neurotic 
tendency; but if we use this word neurotic, we 
really must guard ourselves against attaching any 
unpleasant or sinister meaning to it. It is largely 
the neurotic people that do the work of the world, 
and fortunate are those who have the finely strung, 
delicately organised nervous system which that ad- 
jective indicates. This definitely asserted, we may 
go on to assert that worry can scarcely cause hys- 
teria, neurasthenia, or any other functional nervous 
disease in people of the phlegmatic or even the 
average type. But it is, of course, the neurotic 
people who are temperamentally inclined to worry. 



^ 



IV 
WORRY IN ILLNESS 

In the preceding chapter we saw the intimacy of 
the relations between worry and physical disease. 
We saw what the consequences of the fear of dis- 
ease may be — consequences showing themselves in 
lowered resistance to the attacks of microbes on the 
one hand, and in the production of various kinds of 
nervous disease on the other hand. But now we 
must consider a further aspect of the same subject. 
Given a case of illness of any kind, what are the 
relations which worry about it will display? 

I do not speak of worry on the part of friends 
nor yet on the part of the doctor; such worry, 
indeed, if it leads to care and judicious action, is 
normal, necessary, and useful. Indeed, we may 
say that it is in the patient's first interests that his 
friends and his doctor shall endure this vicarious 
worry. They should worry in order that he may 
not. For let us consider the consequences of worry 
in him. 

Just as it is indisputable, however we choose to 
explain the facts, that worry may lower the resist- 
ance to an initial infection by microbes, so it is cer- 
tain that when the infection has already occurred — 
that is to say, during the course of an illness due 



44 WORRY 

to infection — its consequences will be markedly 
influenced by worry upon the part of the patient. 
At first, indeed, one is inclined to say that the best 
kind of patient is a dog or a cow. Here there is 
complete ignorance and complete lack of apprehen- 
sion : things are simply taken as they come. There 
are not a few doctors who might well desire all 
their patients to be of this class — the more nearly 
vegetable the better. 

But to admit this as a complete statement of the 
truth would be to see only one side of the question. 
These are certainly the best patients for those 
doctors who, whatever their other gifts may be, do 
not possess the supreme gift of the doctor, which 
is not scientific insight, nor power of diagnosis, nor 
knowledge of drugs, nor even the ability to work 
hard and forget nothing, but is the power of en- 
listing the patient's mind upon the side of the 
forces that make for life and recovery. 

This power is one of the most remarkable and 
potent realities in the whole of medicine. It is 
not necessary that it should be exercised by the 
doctor; there may be something in the patient 
himself — some happy optimism, some religious 
faith, some determination to recover and finish 
his work, some " will to be well " which will serve 
the same purpose ; or the power may be exercised 
by the friends or the nurse, and certain it is that 
the nurse is scarcely less important — if, indeed, 
she be not more important — than the doctor in 
this respect. 



WORRY IN ILLNESS 45 

We may or may not possess a theory which 
serves to explain how it is that the mind of the 
patient is able to influence his recovery even from 
a disease which consists in the introduction of ma- 
terial, tangible poisons into his blood. For myself 
I think that a perfectly reasonable theory can be 
constructed. The more we study the processes of 
recovery, the more we are convinced that they 
depend, not upon the introduction of drugs from 
without, but upon the activity of forces within the 
body. This power of the body to heal itself has 
been recognised for ages under the name vis medi- 
catrix naturae — the healing power of nature. In 
modern times we have come to discover that this 
power depends upon the ability of various organs 
in the body to produce protective and antidotal 
substances which destroy the poisons produced by 
microbes or even kill the microbes outright; such 
a substance may be produced in the liver or in the 
pancreas or in the bone-marrow or in the thyroid 
gland or elsewhere. But these tissues, like all 
others, are subject to the control of the nervous 
system. Their nutrition — upon which their ac- 
tivity depends — is absolutely at the mercy of the 
nutritive or, to use the technical term, the trophic, 1 
influence which the nervous system sheds upon 
them by means of the special nutritive or trophic 
nerves that are distributed to every part of the 
body. If we clearly bear this mechanism in mind 
we can readily discern a rational explanation — 

1 Cf. the word atrophy. 



46 WORRY 

perhaps here completely stated for the first time — 
of the manner in which the mind is able to control 
the processes of disease. We can readily under- 
stand that the trophic influence of the nervous 
system is diminished by worry and is multiplied 
by hope. 

But really no theory matters in practice. Fas- 
cinating though the intellectual interest of the sub- 
ject may be, the facts are the all-essential things, 
and they are independent of any theory. Some- 
how or other — though probably in the fashion 
I have described — the mind is a potent force 
whence may spring that healing power or force of 
nature whereby recovery from infectious disease is 
so frequently obtained. 

Thus worry in illness directly makes for death 
— for it directly interferes, at their very fountain- 
head, with the forces that make for life. Now the 
history of the last fifty years is of the greatest 
interest in this respect. 

Half a century ago, patients and doctors alike 
were deeply ignorant of the causes of disease and 
of the explanation of the symptoms which mani- 
fested themselves. Of the two, doubtless the pa- 
tient was the more ignorant. Thus, in those days, 
there was little to induce him to keep any very close 
watch over his own condition. What he did 
closely observe, however, was — and still is — the 
manner of the doctor. That was certainly as it 
should be. Nowadays, however, most patients 
possess that little knowledge which is a dangerous 



WORRY IN ILLNESS 47 

thing. Thus they want to know the why and the 
wherefore of everything; they show the deepest 
interest in their own chart and in every change in 
diet or medicine. Sometimes this tendency dis- 
plays itself in the most ludicrous fashions, as in the 
case of a patient who consulted a well-known 
professor of surgery regarding a rupture, and 
breathlessly inquired whether it consisted of large 
intestine or small intestine. Again, cases are not 
infrequent nowadays where a patient practically 
dies with his finger upon his own pulse. 

The question how this tendency should be met 
is at first sight a very difficult one to answer. The 
spread of physiological knowledge is undoubtedly 
beneficial on the whole. There are certain facts of 
very simple character, knowledge of which, if com- 
mon to the general public, would create a public 
opinion able immediately to abolish a very large 
proportion of all disease. On the other hand, this 
physiological knowledge is often very far from 
beneficial to the individual sufferer. 

Undoubtedly the true remedy, when it is avail- 
able, is to be found in the personality of the physi- 
cian. This was important enough fifty years ago, 
and its importance is greater now on account of 
several reasons. The first is that the physician has 
to reckon with a greater amount of average knowl- 
edge on the part of his patients ; the said knowledge 
leading simply to useless worry. Again, the pro- 
portion of disease that is entirely nervous in origin 
and nature is yearly increasing in civilised com- 



48 WORRY 

munities, and this is the kind of disease in which 
the personality of the physician, always a major 
factor, becomes almost the only factor of any im- 
portance. Yet again, the psychical type is under- 
going a modification in the direction of increased 
self -consciousness and nervousness and increased 
remoteness from the vegetable. 

The successful physician is born and not made 
— no, not by the finest curriculum in the world. 
It is true that the curative manner may be assumed 
and cultivated in a certain degree, but the value of 
such a manner can never equal that of the man in 
whom it is inborn and natural. The object of the 
wise phys: ian is that the patient shall be directly 
the better for his visit as such. There should be 
something characteristic and conscious of power 
even in the way in which he knocks at the door or 
rings the bell. With him there enter hope and 
confidence. Of course the reader will readily 
understand, what only the born physician accom- 
plishes in practice, that the manner must be adapted 
to the requirements of the individual patient. In 
not a few cases the physician will effect his end by 
a boisterous, hearty manner. He enters the room 
like a hurricane, and his tones can be heard all over 
the house. He treats every suggestion or com- 
plaint of the patient with gigantic and emphatic 
contempt. He gives the impression of brute force 
that will not be gainsaid. When he leaves, the 
patient feels that this man will smash the disease. 

But a nervous, sensitive woman, whose ears are 



WORRY IN ILLNESS 49 

liable to be injured by any but the lowest tones, 
would probably succumb at once to such a manner. 
In order to effect in her precisely the same conse- 
quences, the born physician will adopt quite a dif- 
ferent manner. There is nothing artificial about 
this change, any more than there is anything arti- 
ficial about the difference of manner you adopt in a 
drawing-room as compared with the dressing-room 
after a football match. The physician enters this 
room very quietly. He suggests power as he did 
in the last case; that is essential. But he does not 
suggest it by physical violence. He does not dump 
himself down on the edge of the bed, but quietly 
draws a chair to the patient's side. Whereas in 
shaking hands on the previous occasion he gave 
the impression that at a moment's notice he would 
be prepared to squeeze the hand off altogether, in 
this case his pressure is gentle though firm. Firm 
it must always be. The physician who places in 
his patient's palm a hand that suggests a dead fish 
would be better heaving coals. That sort of hand- 
shake will be quite sufficient to make a sensitive 
patient prepare for death. But in the case we are 
considering, the suggestion of power is conveyed 
by subtler means than the purely mechanical. The 
tones are low, sympathetic, clear. No question is 
ever repeated — a very characteristic fault which 
clearly shows that the physician has been thinking 
of something else instead of listening to the answer 
on the first occasion. The satisfactory statements 
of the patient or the nurse are received with evi- 

4 



50 WORRY 

dent pleasure but without surprise. The physician 
clearly shows that he expected nothing less. 

But I need not spend more time upon this matter. 
Any observant reader is as familiar with these 
things as I am myself. The observant nurse, also, 
accustomed to working with a successful physician, 
will have noticed how in one case he is boisterous, 
in another subdued and grave, in another almost 
" oily " : but how, by these varying means in every 
case he effects the same result — the transmission 
to the patient of a sense of power that is deter- 
mined, confident, and irresistible. 

The reader who has studied the modern views 
of such a disease as pneumonia or diphtheria, the 
invasion of the microbe, the manufacture of its 
poisons or toxins, and the production in the blood 
of antidotes or antitoxins, may doubt whether the 
physician's manner can have any bearing upon the 
issue of such a disease. To such a reader I would 
submit the theory advanced above of the fashion 
in which the personality of the physician may and 
does work for cure even in such cases. As for the 
reader who can recall a serious illness of his own, 
and who was fortunate enough to be attended by a 
physician or a nurse or both, whom nature pre- 
destined for this service — he is beyond the need 
of any remarks of mine. 

The power by which the physician or the nurse 
affects the mind of the patient is known to psycho- 
logists as suggestion. We may define suggestion 



WORRY IN ILLNESS 51 

as the influence exercised upon the body and its 
functions by the subtle power of ideas or of per- 
sonality. The individual influenced may be wholly 
unaware of the occurrence; for the feature of 
suggestion is that it acts less upon the conscious 
part of the mind than upon the subconscious mind. 

There are scarcely any limits to its power. It 
can kill outright, as in well attested cases, where, 
for instance, the joke has been played of blindfold- 
ing a schoolboy, telling him that he is to be be- 
headed, and then striking his neck, at the word 
of command, with a wet towel. In such circum- 
stances a boy has been known to die instantly. 
It can cause unconsciousness, as when the nurse 
injects ten drops of a solution of common salt 
under the soporific name of morphia — and in a 
few moments the patient is asleep. It can de- 
termine immunity or susceptibility to infectious 
disease, as when the person who fears infection 
is struck down, whilst he or she who does not fear 
or does not care, escapes. That these things 
happen there is no possible doubt. That sugges- 
tion can produce or relieve pain every one knows. 
That it can produce subcutaneous haemorrhages 
and severe ulcerations is proved by the cases of the 
" stigmata " of St. Francis and others. 

If this thing be so potent, is it not worth our 
while to make more definite and intelligent ac- 
quaintance with it? Assuredly it is, for though 
the power of suggestion may certainly be exer- 
cised unconsciously, yet there is no question that 



52 WORRY 

it is much more potent when the " suggester " 
deliberately determines to exercise what influence 
may be possible upon the mind of the subject. 

And here is my point. The medical profession 
is only now beginning to discover that there is 
something to be learned from the Christian Scien- 
tists and their like. As for the nurse, it is only 
when she has been exceptionally fortunate that 
her full potentialities in this respect have been 
revealed to her by her tutors. But more and more 
— and especially since infectious disease will ever 
be a diminishing quantity, whilst the nervous sys- 
tem becomes of ever greater importance in medi- 
cine and therapeutics — the doctor will learn to 
use his personality judiciously. 

Undoubtedly the doctor has this advantage over 
the nurse as a therapeutic mind — that he is sup- 
posed, in virtue of his skill, to hold the keys of life 
and death; but the nurse has other advantages. 
I believe that her sex is a great advantage, in the 
first place, — this, perhaps, more especially with 
male patients, — for the ill man has a sound 
organic instinct, which makes him lean upon a 
woman standing to him as his mother once stood. 
Again, the nurse has far more opportunities than 
the doctor ; and the nursing instinct, in its highest 
manifestations, certainly includes the instinctive 
knowledge how to exercise suggestion. 

I wish to insist upon the importance of these 
facts for the wise nurse, and my points are simply 
these: that suggestion is a reality of very great 



WORRY IN ILLNESS 53 

importance in medicine, and that its importance 
tends to increase; that it may and should be exer- 
cised by the nurse, who is probably more impor- 
tant than the doctor as what I have elsewhere called 
a " therapeutic mind " ; that at present the nurse 
is not explicitly taught the possibilities and func- 
tions of suggestion, and that she should be taught 
that the power may and often does turn the scale, 
even in cases of grave infectious or microbic 
disease, such as pneumonia; that it is much more 
efficient when consciously and deliberately exer- 
cised than when unconsciously; and that, in the 
not distant future, the systematic but diplomatic 
and subtle suggestion by the nurse to the patient 
of the probability of recovery, of the potency of his 
drugs, of the evanescent character of his pains, and 
of many facts more which will be facts if only he 
believes, will be recognised as amongst the essen- 
tial and indispensable duties of the complete nurse. 

Certain interesting facts are worthy of record 
in illustration of the theory that the influence of 
worry, and its opposite self-confidence, in illness is 
largely effected through the action of the nervous 
system upon the secretions of the body. Utterly 
impossible as it is for us to understand the rela- 
tions of " mind and body," we may sometimes feel 
inclined, especially under the influence of the psy- 
chology of the present day, to the view that no 
purely mental state can affect the body: but a 
further study of psychology will teach us that there 



54 WORRY 

is no purely mental state. Every mental state is 
associated with a physical state of the physical 
organ called the brain, and it is by this that further 
bodily results are made possible. 

Recent study of the dog by the celebrated physi- 
ologist, Professor Pavlov (or Pawlow) of the 
Military Academy of Medicine, St. Petersburg, 
has shown that such influences occur even in the 
lower animals. It has been proved that the mere 
spectacle or lively expectation of food in a hungry 
dog causes active secretion not only of the saliva 
but also of the gastric juice. The phrase, " It 
made my mouth water," indicates our recognition 
of this amongst ourselves. 

This instance, however, leads us to another, 
which is much more striking, and for which, as 
might be expected, we must have recourse to the 
case of man. It is a common practice in India, 
when some servant out of a large number is sus- 
pected of having committed a theft, to employ the 
influence of worry upon the body as a means of 
identifying the offender. The servants are all 
ordered into a room where they are publicly com- 
pelled to take a large mouthful of some very dry 
powder or the like. The problem is to swallow 
this, and it is the rule that the fear of detection and 
the consciousness of guilt completely arrest the 
secretion of saliva by the offender, so that he can 
readily be detected; for, unlike his innocent fel- 
lows, he cannot swallow his mouthful. 

This well-known fact has only to be applied to 



WORRY IN ILLNESS 55 

our consideration of the influence of worry in ill- 
ness for us to recognise that this psychical state 
may gravely interfere with the production of those 
internal secretions in terms of which, as we have 
seen, the vis medicatrix naturae must now be 
expressed — at any rate, in large degree. 

The same is true of fatigue. Now in many ill- 
nesses, such as pneumonia — there is no better or 
more frequent and serious instance — the practical 
problem is simply this — to keep the patient's heart 
going until the crisis is past. Heart failure at or 
immediately before the crisis is the actual cause of 
death in nearly all fatal cases of this extremely 
fatal disease ; and the failure is due not merely to 
the fact that the muscular tissue of the heart is 
being poisoned, but also to the fact that it has 
been terribly hard worked owing to the interfer- 
ence with the circulation through the inflamed 
lungs. How, then, are fatigue and exhaustion of 
this vital organ to be averted? Partly, beyond a 
doubt, by a practical recognition of Shakespeare's 
couplet — 

" A merry heart goes all the day 
Your sad tires in a mile-a." 

We do well to express courage by the phrase " a 
stout heart." If the patient says, " I will not die," 
or " I will not die until my son arrives to see me," 
or if he is heartened, as we well say, by faith, then 
his courage will avert heart fatigue, and his 
chances of surviving the crisis are increased. Many 
and many a time have doctors observed the amaz- 



56 WORRY 

ing power of sheer determination and courage to 
keep a patient alive when all the hopes of his at- 
tendants have been abandoned. 

But in order that we may see the subject 
" steadily and whole," it will be well for us to 
devote a special chapter to its broader aspects. 



V 



MIND AND BODY — IN HEALTH 
AND DISEASE 

In 1873 there was published at Philadelphia a 
pioneer book, the full title of which was " The 
Influence of the Mind upon the Body in Health 
and Disease, designed to elucidate the action of 
the Imagination." The author was Dr. Hack 
Tuke, grandson of the founder of the Retreat, 
York, and himself a loyal servant of that institu- 
tion, and later of Hanwell Asylum, London. His 
name is familiar to students of the mind-diseased 
everywhere. Copies of this remarkable book are 
nowadays hardly obtainable, but the wisdom of it 
is more than ever worthy of wide dissemination 
in these days when Christian Science, for instance, 
is compelling the attention of the medical pro- 
fession to truths too long left for exploitation by 
charlatans. 

In his " Anatomy of Melancholy," Burton very 
well states the two aspects of the relation between 
mind and body in disease : — 

" Some are molested by Phantasie ; so some, again, 
by Fancy alone and a good conceit, are as easily re- 
covered. . . . All the world knows there is no vertue 
in charms, etc, but a strong conceit and opinion alone, 



58 WORRY 

. . . which forceth a motion of the humours, spirits, 
and blood; which takes away the cause of the malady 
from the parts affected. The like we may say of the 
magical effects, superstitious cures, and such as are 
done by mountebanks and wizards. As by wicked 
incredulity many men are hurt ... we find, in our 
experience, by the same means, many are relieved." 

So far as this quotation goes, at any rate, there 
is no room for me to criticise my famous predeces- 
sor of the seventeenth century; this old writer on 
worry saw the main facts clearly. It would not 
have been wise for me to leave the last chapter 
unbalanced by this, for we must clearly recognise 
that the influence of " worry in illness '" is com- 
plemented by the influence of faith, sanguine imag- 
ination, or self-confidence, — " by the same means 
[i. e. 9 by the power of ' Phantasie '] many are 
relieved." 

These, in brief, are the propositions which Dr. 
Tuke sets himself to consider, fortified in his ap- 
preciation of the worthiness of the task by this 
quotation from John Hunter, one of the acutest 
medical observers of any age : " There is not 
a natural action in the body, whether involuntary 
or voluntary, that may not be influenced by the 
peculiar state of the mind at the time." Plainly 
we must consider this subject, having elsewhere 
devoted much attention to the influence of the 
body upon the mind, and especially in the produc- 
tion of the mental state called worry. 

Even to-day, the medical curriculum, though it 
becomes longer and more complicated every year, 



MIND AND BODY 59 

and includes a whole host of specialisms, lacks not 
merely a formal course on Psychology, — an ex- 
traordinary omission to which I have frequently 
called attention, — but also any systematic study 
of the power of the mind as a therapeutic agent. 
Indeed, even after the lapse of a generation, these 
words of Dr. Tuke's are as applicable as ever : — 

" The medical reader, I hope, may be induced to 
employ Psycho-therapeutics in a more methodical way 
than heretofore, and thus copy nature in those in- 
teresting instances, occasionally occurring, of sudden 
recovery, from the spontaneous action of some power- 
ful moral cause, by employing the same force de- 
signedly, instead of leaving it to mere chance. The 
force is there, acting irregularly and capriciously. 
The question is whether it cannot be applied and 
guided with skill and wisdom by the physician. 
Again and again we exclaim, when some new nos- 
trum, powerless in itself, effects a cure, " It 's only 
the Imagination ! " We attribute to this remarkable 
mental influence a power which ordinary medicines 
have failed to exert, and yet are content, with a shrug 
of the shoulders, to dismiss the circumstance from 
our minds without further thought. I want medical 
men who are in active practice to utilise this force, 
to yoke it to the car of the Son of Apollo, and, rescu- 
ing it from the eccentric orbits of quackery, force it 
to tread, with measured step, the orderly paths of 
legitimate medicine." 

So much, then, by way of reference to the 
book in which the influence of the mind upon the 
body was first adequately dealt with. We accept 
as an axiom the proposition that the mind can 
and commonly does influence or control bodily 



60 WORRY 

processes of the most manifold and various kinds, 
both in health and disease. Elsewhere we consider 
the influence of the same or similar bodily processes 
upon the mind, both in health and disease — pro- 
ducing in health an organic optimism, and in 
disease, as a rule, an organic pessimism, depression 
or worry, though, in certain diseases, actually pro- 
ducing an abnormal optimism or exaltation. 

Two distinct subjects remain, however, for brief 
reference in the present chapter: each of them 
must find a place somewhere in a book on worry. 
These are hypnotism and hypochondria. 

Hypnotism, of course, could properly be dealt 
with only in* an entire volume. Here I merely 
state established facts. Hypnotism has nothing 
to do with " animal magnetism " or any other 
physical entity; it is a purely psychical power. 
Hypnotism is a state of abnormal consciousness 
produced by what we know as suggestion: this 
may proceed from a hypnotist, from a sensation, 
or from an idea — " auto-suggestion," producing 
self-hypnotisation, is an established fact. There 
is no function of the nervous system that may not 
be modified during the hypnotic state, and there- 
fore no state of the body at large that may not 
thereby be modified. Despite such objections as 
the opportunities it affords for quackery, hypnotism 
is unquestionably a state in which the mind may 
influence the body in such a way as to remove 
physical causes of worry {e.g., nervous indiges- 
tion) ; it provides a condition in which, by sug- 



MIND AND BODY 61 

gestion, worry-producing ideas may be caused to 
vanish, and it often enables the hypnotist to van- 
quish that potent predisposing cause of worry, 
insomnia. 

Brief and passing references are made to hypo- 
chondria or hypochondriasis in other parts of this 
book; here I refer to it for the sake of formal 
completeness. Elsewhere we discuss worry in ill- 
ness : hypochondria is simply worry about illness. 
The hypochondriac has a healthy body, but he 
suffers from a mental disease — a variety of mor- 
bid worry — which consists in a baseless apprehen- 
sion of physical disease. Either he fears that some 
terrible malady is about to overtake him, or he 
magnifies into a mountain a mere molehill of dis- 
comfort; a distorted toenail, or a white tongue 
before breakfast (when nearly all tongues are 
white) may cause him more mental perturbation 
than grave disease will cause in another man. In 
its milder forms hypochondria is closely allied with 
valetudinarianism. 

This baseless worry about disease may partly 
yield to change of air or occupation, to pleasant 
company and nourishing food ; but it is a psychical 
disorder, and the true remedy for it is psychical. 
The " born physician," whom I discuss elsewhere, 
has only to bring his irresistible personality to bear 
upon it, and the cure is wrought. 

I devote a special chapter to the vile manner in 
which sexual hypochondria is brought into being 
and fostered in young persons by the advertisers 



62 WORRY 

whom an ignorant and careless standard of social 
ethics permits to do their dirty work with the aid 
of our public prints. I may add that much hypo- 
chondria is nowadays caused, also, by the ad- 
vertisements of quack medicines, which teach, for 
instance, in utter defiance of the facts, that every 
trivial pain in the back is a symptom of grave 
kidney disease. The time will come when public 
opinion, educated at last, will make an end of these 
offensive nuisances. 



-f 



VI 

WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 

In studying the influence of worry upon infec- 
tious diseases and upon the process of infection 
itself, we are concerned, after all, with that kind 
of disease which is becoming less and less im- 
portant; whilst there remains another kind of 
disease, the importance of which is daily increasing. 
In the present chapter I wish to consider worry in 
its relation to the mind diseased, and we shall use 
this phrase to cover the whole realm of mental dis- 
order, ranging from even the mere inability to 
work as hard as usual to insanity itself. 

But first I purpose to throw in the very forefront 
of this article the question of what may be called 
the hygiene of the mind in so far as worry bears 
upon it. It would be useless merely to say that the 
mind must be protected from the influences of 
worry by a careful adherence to the injunction not 
to worry. This would be of no more practical 
value than would a mere unsupplemented demon- 
stration of the potency of worry in this respect. 
But fortunately there is an extremely familiar 
practical question which recurs in regular fashion 
in the experience of each of us, and which has an 
immediate bearing on this question. Let us here 



64 WORRY 

inquire, without further delay, into the philosophy 
of holidaying. Let us ask what a holiday really is 
worth, and what are the conditions in which its 
worth may be most fully realised. This is a subject 
true notions of which must necessarily be of value 
to every one who possesses them. 

The first question to answer is as to what con- 
stitutes the essential of a holiday : What is a holi- 
day? We must reject any definition which does 
not cover all the cases, and, if possible, must find 
one which gets to the heart of the matter. If we 
do get there we shall find, I wager, that our whole 
conception of all real and necessary holidaying 
must be framed in terms of worry. 

For some men a holiday may consist in rest 
from any kind of set occupation. Their holidays 
are constituted by lying in a hammock with a hand- 
kerchief over the head, an unread book slipping 
from the fingers, and the senses occupied by noth- 
ing more than the sleepy hum of summer flies. If, 
in the course of such a holiday, one sleeps very 
nearly the round of the clock, it is none the worse 
for that. This may not constitute the reader's 
notion of a holiday, and it is very far from con- 
stituting mine; but for those whom it happens to 
suit, the dolce far niente is a holiday of the best. 

On the other hand, another man's holiday — by 
which he may profit no less than his lazy neighbour 
by his — may consist in a cricket tour, including 
an enormous amount of physical work. Yet 
another will travel, covering almost impossible 



WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 65 

distances and seeing an incredible number of 
things. Judged in physical terms, such holidays 
as these are the very antithesis of the first kind of 
holiday I have described. In the one case there 
is the minimum expenditure of physical energy; 
in the other cases, there is the expenditure of per- 
haps a dozen times the customary amount. Yet, 
as every one knows, these varying procedures all 
constitute true holidays for those whom they re- 
spectively suit. Plainly, then, any physical or 
merely muscular criterion of a holiday is a matter 
of accident and not of essence. In answering the 
question, What is a holiday? we must turn from 
the physical to the psychical — from matter to 
mind. 

Is a holiday, then, constituted by freedom from 
mental work ? Directly we think of it, we see that 
we have not yet reached an essential definition. 
One man's idea of a holiday is freedom for mathe- 
matical research; another longs for his holiday 
because he is to have the pleasure of writing a book 
therein ; yet another will swear to read no printed 
word that he can avoid for six weeks, nor ever to 
take a pen in hand, and he also may obtain a 
genuine and effective holiday. Plainly, then, as 
the physical method of estimating a holiday failed 
us, so also does the method by estimation of mental 
work done or not done. 

Yet certainly it is in the realm of mind that we 
must remain if we are to discover the one fact 
which is common to, and which is the only essential 

5 



66 WORRY 

of, all forms of holiday. It is some state of mind 
or other that really constitutes a holiday — and 
what is that ? Well, it is certain that one may lock 
one's self up in one's room and have a superb holi- 
day; one may go to bed with some not too un- 
reasonable illness, such as a simple fracture, and 
may have a holiday of the best; or, on the other 
hand, one may travel abroad, meeting one's busi- 
ness letters at each Poste Restante, covering many 
miles, seeing many new things, and yet not holi- 
daying at all. As I have repeatedly stated else- 
where, the business man on holiday, if he is wise, 
will not let any one know where he is. He is to be 
pursued neither by post nor telegraph nor tele- 
phone. " If his business worries are to follow him, 
he will do much better to stay at home and tackle 
them with the conveniences which that implies. 
The deadly thing in modern life is worry, and 
worry is more deadly on holiday than anywhere 
else, besides making the name a farce. Worry and 
responsibility are very nearly one; and thus the 
wise doctor on holiday will not be caught revealing 
his profession." 

We have discovered, then, what really constitutes 
a holiday, and the discovery is a capital one, lead- 
ing to many interesting conclusions. To holiday 
is to be free from worry. Every kind of holiday, 
wherever and however spent, possesses this charac- 
ter, and no proceedings which do not possess it 
can constitute a holiday. It follows that the un- 
employed rich, for instance, or such of them as 



WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 67 

are free from any kind of responsibility or cause 
of worry, cannot holiday; it is not merely that 
they cannot enjoy a holiday, but that they can- 
not holiday at all. No matter what devices they 
employ or expenditure they undertake, they can- 
not obtain that sense of freedom from normal 
worry which is the essence of a holiday, and which 
is reserved for those who have work and duties 
and cares. 

Again, it follows from our discovery that, even 
in the case of those who do a large amount of men- 
tal work, a holiday, as the term is commonly under- 
stood, may be totally unnecessary. Many men 
who lead the intellectual life work their brains as 
hard as ever during their holidays. There are 
countless instances on record of such men who 
never wanted or took what is commonly understood 
by a holiday, and who lived to an old age, physi- 
cally and intellectually green. The happy few 
whose work so called involves no worry, no fear, 
no apprehension, make holiday every day, or are 
beyond the need of holidays — which you please. 

For convenience we may express our conclu- 
sions in a very terse form, if we use the word 
" work " in its most common sense. Work is best 
defined as anything that one has to do; everything 
else, however much intellectual or physical activity 
it may entail, is occupation, employment, diver- 
tissement, or anything else you care to call it, but 
not work. The essence of a holiday, then, is the 
complete suppression of the normal struggle- for- 



68 WORRY 

existence aspect of the mind's work. This once 
granted, it matters not at all how strenuously you 
employ yourself at anything whatever that you do 
for the love of it. 

I fancy that some readers will expect me, in dis- 
cussing worry, to insist that the modern civilised 
man is apt to overstrain his mind, never giving it 
a real rest. I may have been expected to declare 
that strenuous folk must learn how to do nothing, 
how to take a " real holiday." But I do not be- 
lieve for a moment that the reality of a holiday 
depends upon mental rest. I believe that a man 
with a competent and active mind is in no more 
need of resting that mind than a batsman who has 
already made ninety-nine runs, and finds himself 
master of the bowling, is in need of resting his 
muscles. On the contrary, I incline to the view 
that it is good for the body and for the mind 
alike to exercise those functions of which they are 
capable. .The batsman about to make his century 
will be in no wise benefited by being deprived of 
his opportunity to complete his tale of runs. The 
student who has written all but the crowning chap- 
ter of a book will be in no wise benefited by being 
deprived of his opportunity. The man with good 
muscles, the man with a good mind, the man with 
a good voice — in short, the man who is capable 
of exercising without strain any function what- 
ever, does well in general to do so. In contraven- 
tion of the common views on the subject may be 
noticed the very common cases of men, active, 



WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 69 

vigorous, and eager in mind, who have done abund- 
ance of hard work for years and thrived on it, and 
who then, retiring from business, become a nui- 
sance to themselves and their families, begin to 
overeat themselves, fret, fuss, and worry about 
trifles, and deteriorate in body and in mind — all 
in consequence of a holiday which was premature, 
and was therefore not wanted. 

More persistently than ever, civilisation is tend- 
ing to produce the type of man whose mind will 
not be content with doing nothing. My point is 
that there is no need for him to do nothing. If, 
like the vast majority of us, he has work to do — 
work in the sense of whatever has to be done willy- 
nilly — he must certainly have his annual holiday, 
his annual period of discharge from such worry 
as is normal and incidental to his work. But if 
this be granted it does not matter how hard he 
employs his brain for fun. He may play as much 
chess as he pleases, or may toy with algebraic for- 
mulae, may write the most un-Miltonic of blank 
verse, or compose the most stale and effete and 
laboured of music ; he may drive his brain as hard 
as he pleases in any direction whatever, provided 
that there be no must driving him, no worry, no 
fear of consequences, should his task not be done 
or not be done well. On the other hand, he may 
be one of those unfortunate people who will worry 
about their play, who thus transform into work, 
as we have defined work, everything that they do. 
Such a man on holiday joins in a local cricket 



70 WORRY 

match; he is in a state of nervous perspiration 
before he goes in to bat, and he mopes all the after- 
noon because his partner ran him out. Precious 
little good the cricket has done him! I know a 
man, very dear to me, who rather fancies his bat- 
ting, and who sometimes finds it difficult to get 
to sleep at night because he happened to come 
down a fraction of a second too late upon a fast 
" yorker " a few hours before. The more fool he! 
Plainly he is on the way to taking his cricket too 
seriously, converting it into work and a source of 
worry. Most people will rightly say that cricket 
is an ideal recreation for the brain-worker; but 
in the case I have instanced the brain-worker would 
be much better to work his brains harder than ever, 
as at chess, rather than worry when he fails to get 
runs. Furthermore, I believe that there is no evi- 
dence to support the doctrine which assures us that 
men kill themselves by overwork. Men kill them- 
selves by worry every day, but not by overwork as 
such. For most brain-workers there is no better 
holiday than a novel intellectual occupation, pro- 
vided that it be absolutely careless. I incline to 
believe that intellectual labour without worry never 
injured any one yet, and never will. I also believe 
that, just as the successful business man, when he 
retires, is apt to become a poor, querulous creature, 
worrying about the most ridiculous domestic trifles, 
so also the ordinary brain-worker who accepts the 
common doctrine that in order to holiday it is 
necessary to give the brain rest, may do himself 



WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 71 

far more harm than good. If Satan finds some 
mischief still for idle hands to do, he certainly 
finds some worry still for the idle mind to endure 
— unless, of course, it be the mind of an idler, with 
which I have no interest or concern here. The 
true holiday of the brain-worker must not consist 
of replacing something by nothing, for Nature 
abhors a vacuum, and will fill it with worry. It 
must include the provision of a novel mental occu- 
pation in sufficient quantity, the essential character 
of that occupation being not its novelty, but the 
fact that there is no worry associated with it — it 
is done for fun. 

This is not merely a question of the difference 
between working for money and not working for 
money. A man of an egoistic type, such as my 
friend, may do the greater part of his ordinary 
work for glory, and may play cricket with the same 
motive. When his cricket is not successful he 
worries just as he would worry if his work were 
not successful. There is all the difference in the 
world between this state of mind and that of the 
cricketer who plays the game for love of it alone, 
and who, if he fails to score, is merely disap- 
pointed. He will sleep none the worse for that. 

Having defined the process of holiday-making, 
not in terms of matter and motion, as is commonly 
done, but in terms of mind, we shall find, I think, 
that the truer definition is not merely true, but 
useful. It will enable us to include under our idea 
of holiday-making certain occupations which would 



72 WORRY 

never be associated with holidaying in the opinion 
of those who think that the essential of a holiday 
is the motion of a certain amount of matter — one's 
body — through a not too small amount of space. 
I wish the reader to include, as part of the hygienic 
or health-preserving process which we now under- 
stand holidaying to be, the habit of hobby-hunting. 
The importance of this habit daily increases, just 
as the importance of our whole subject daily in- 
creases. Natural selection acts nowadays not so 
much upon the plane of muscle as upon that of 
mind; not upon brawn, but upon brain. More 
and more, therefore, the normal or average mental 
type departs from what we may call the bucolic 
or rustic standard and approximates to the civic 
standard. The man who is happy doing nothing 
becomes scarcer, whilst the man of curious, busy, 
and active mind becomes more common. Now, 
such a man is more and not less prone to worry, 
and is more, not less, in need of freedom from 
worry; but that need is to be met by a positive 
rather than a merely negative process. The annual 
holiday is highly desirable, but it is very necessary 
for the modern man to remember that he must not 
count upon it too exclusively. Every day should 
include a period of holiday-making; and this is 
where the hobby comes in. I am only at one with 
practical psychologists and physicians in general 
when I insist upon the value of hobbies. We may 
distinguish hobbies from sports, perhaps, by de- 
scribing the first as mental recreations and the 



WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 73 

second as physical recreations. It is because of the 
needs of the modern mind that hobbies are so 
valuable. I have already spoken of the man of 
active mind who retires from business on some 
particular birthday — as if years, of all things in 
the world, constituted the criterion of age — and I 
have shown how such a man may suffer accord- 
ingly. But if he has a hobby, some form of mental 
occupation which he does for the love of it — 
anticipating the happy future state to which I look 
forward when all human occupations will be ends 
in themselves, and when no one will do uncon- 
genial work because he must — the case is totally 
changed. Such a man is in no danger of suffering 
rapid psychical degeneration. Similar, also, is the 
case of the man who has to work for his daily 
bread at something from which worry cannot be 
always dissociated. Such a man very frequently 
will find that sports or physical recreations do not 
avail to banish from his mind the thought of 
business worries. It is, indeed, quite natural that 
as mind becomes more important and body less im- 
portant in the constitution of man, amusements 
that are merely physical or bodily should cease to 
be as useful as they are in the case of the kitten or 
the child. In short, the average worried man needs 
something more than mere sport or play as such. 
His imperative demand is for a new mental interest. 
I have already said that Nature abhors a vacuum ; 
and this aphorism may be especially applied to the 
modern mind. It must be filled with something, 



74 WORRY 

and business cares will not be dispossessed from it 
merely because the body which it owns happens to 
be swinging dumb-bells. They must be pushed out 
by something else. Certainly the dumb-bells will 
suffice, or golf, or any form of sport, if they hap- 
pen to arouse sufficient mental interest to banish 
any consciousness of the ordinary worries of life. 
The mere element of competition in sport is often 
quite sufficient for this end, since man is a com- 
peting animal if he is anything. The struggle-for- 
existence and sexual selection between them have 
seen to that. Hence, very often we find that the 
best relief from the serious competitions of life, 
entailing serious worries, is to be found in the 
mock-serious competition of games and sports 
with their mock worries. I have already adverted 
to the danger that in some people the mock worries 
may become real worries; but that must not be 
permitted. Nothing, I fancy, will dispossess a 
real worry better than a mock worry — of which 
one knows quite well, even whilst making the most 
of it, as every sportsman does when he tries to win 
a game for his side, that it is " only a game, after 
all," and does not matter. To lose gloriously in 
the field of sport is not the same as to lose, glori- 
ously or ingloriously, in the field of real life. 

But many men find, especially as they become 
older, that they cannot take sport even mock seri- 
ously enough for it to displace the ordinary cares 
of life from their minds. It is for such men that 
a hobby is a real salvation. As a man grows older 



WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 75 

he begins to " funk fast bowling," or to find that 
his golf becomes worse, and so soon as he becomes 
less skilful he will derive less enjoyment and bene- 
fit. Fortunately, however, the mind takes much 
longer to grow old than the body, and when the 
sports of youth or even of middle age fail, a man 
may turn to one or other of a thousand hobbies, 
and find in them that mental interest which will 
give him every day a holiday or period of freedom 
from worry. Let the man beware, then, who too 
thoughtlessly permits all his intellectual interests 
to atrophy, save those which are concerned with 
his work. Do not let him be caught saying, " I 
have no time for music nowadays," or for any of 
a thousand other things. It is an imperative 
necessity for the average modern man, and is of 
the nature of an investment for coming years, that 
he shall persistently cultivate some other mental 
interest than that with which the worry of the 
struggle-for-existence is associated. Such a mental 
interest, though apparently not utilitarian, and 
though not cultivated for any utilitarian purpose, 
will yet prove to be a valuable weapon in the 
struggle-for-existence itself. 

I have already said, what I here repeat as for- 
cibly as possible, that an utterly false influence has 
been accredited to brain-work as such in the pro- 
duction of nervous breakdown and of insanity. I 
do not for a moment believe that any case of ner- 
vous breakdown or of actual mental disease was 
ever caused in a person of average nervous consti- 



76 WORRY 

tution by mere intellectual labour as such. It is 
not work but care that kills; but it is highly de- 
sirable that we should examine somewhat more 
critically than is customary the proposition that 
men are driven mad by worry. If I were merely 
to emphasise this statement in this form I should 
be doing my readers a grave disservice in tending 
to perpetuate the utterly false notion of insanity 
which still prevails even amongst highly educated 
people. The public has yet to learn the paradox 
that mental disease is physical disease. The causes 
that produce physical disease in stomach, or lung, 
or heart, may produce physical disease in the brain, 
and the expression of that physical disease is men- 
tal disease or insanity. The overwhelming major- 
ity of cases of insanity depend absolutely upon 
material changes in the brain due to the circulation 
of some poison or other in the blood. Of these 
poisons the most important is alcohol — which, 
following an old teacher of mine, I have elsewhere 
called the toxin of the yeast plant. Scarcely less 
effective are the poisons or toxins produced by 
many other forms of lowly plant life which we 
know as bacteria. These poisons produce physical 
changes in the brain upon which the insanity de- 
pends. The doctrine that worry as such can 
produce mental disease is unintelligible to any one 
acquainted with these matters. 

Nevertheless, we can state the facts in a more 
rational form. We begin by reiterating that, con- 
trary to opinion, overwork as such cannot cause 



WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 77 

insanity, but can do so only by first causing worry. 
We must then proceed to say that worry as such 
cannot be conceived to cause insanity, and, in point 
of fact, does not cause insanity. (I am now using 
the word in its common sense, to indicate the really 
grave forms of mental disease.) But worry has 
its ways and means by which it can and does cause 
insanity; they are only too easily enumerated, and 
only too abundantly illustrated in common expe- 
rience. In the first place, worry is a potent cause 
of insanity because it leads to the use of drugs, and 
especially alcohol. Other aspects of this distress- 
ing subject are treated in another article. Here 
I need merely note that alcohol stands out far 
beyond any other one factor as a cause of insanity, 
and that worry is responsible for an enormous 
amount of drinking. Indirectly, then, worry is a 
terribly common cause of insanity, and any success 
that may conceivably attend our study of it will 
be, in its measure, success in attacking one of the 
most appalling problems of our civilisation. 

Again, worry is a most potent foe of sleep, and 
lack of sleep is a most potent foe of sanity. I am 
sometimes inclined to think that the importance of 
sleep in preserving the mental health has been ex- 
aggerated by some writers. We know that before 
an attack of acute mania, only too often resulting 
in murder and suicide, a man commonly passes 
several sleepless nights. The sleeplessness is not 
a cause of his madness, however, but an early symp- 
tom of it. I am, indeed, inclined to think that 



78 WORRY 

physical health suffers more than mental health 
from lack of sleep as such, but if the lack of sleep 
depends upon worry, and, still more, if drugs are 
resorted to in order that sleep may be obtained, 
the cause of the worry not being removed, then 
certainly we have a potent factor in the produc- 
tion of insanity. Though lack of sleep in itself 
is insufficient, I believe, to cause insanity — as is 
surely proved by the countless bad sleepers who do 
not lose their mental health — yet it is certainly 
a most important contributory factor in the pro- 
duction of insanity in that it makes the brain far 
more susceptible than it would otherwise be to the 
action of such poisons as may beset it. In a word, 
it lowers brain resistiveness. The use of alcohol 
and other drugs, then, and interference with sleep, 
constitute most frequent and effective means by 
which worry leads to mental disease of the graver 
kinds. 

I have spoken at but short length of the actual 
relations between worry and grave mental disease. 
This has been possible since the intermediate links 
in the chain of causation are discussed elsewhere. 
On the other hand, I have spoken at very consider- 
able length of the condition by which worry — • such 
as most of us must daily encounter — may be pre- 
vented from causing the minor degrees of mental 
unhealth or mental lack of fitness. In a word, I 
have written less of the pathology than of the 
hygiene of the subject. This is right, I think, 
since my aim here is primarily to be useful, and 



WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 79 

only secondarily to present a complete account of 
the subject. It is my honest belief that what has 
been said regarding the preservation of mental 
health by means of well-devised holidays — that 
is to say, periods of perfect freedom from worry 
— can scarcely fail to be of real utility, especially 
to many hard-working and conscientious readers, 
whose ideal of duty scarcely permits them any 
leisure for mental recreation; and I can certainly 
ask for no higher reward than to serve such readers 
as these. 



VII 
WORRY AND BOREDOM 

Worry in the widest sense may be defined as 
a " maladie des beaux esprits." The un-self-con- 
scious animal does not worry, nor does the properly 
educated child nor- does the savage. The case is 
the same with a psychical state closely allied to 
worry and known as boredom or ennui. 

It is true that we commonly conceive of boredom 
as a neutral or negative state, whilst worry is cer- 
tainly a positive and active state; but such an 
analysis is not adequate. The truly neutral state 
of the emotional nature is not boredom but apathy 
or un-self -conscious content. Ennui, on the other 
hand, is an active state of consciousness and may 
very soon pass into positive irritability. Like 
worry itself, it is peculiar to highly developed 
minds. 

No one ever yet saw a bored dog, and no one 
can conceive of a bored cow. A very young baby 
is incapable of experiencing boredom, but a child 
belonging to any of the higher races will show 
signs of boredom as early as the second year of 
its life. Physicians who practise amongst children 



WORRY AND BOREDOM 81 

are familiar with the phenomenon of the preter- 
naturally " good " child. They are consulted about 
some mental defect observed or suspected and they 
are told that the child — aged say two years — 
never gives the slightest trouble ; provided with the 
simplest toy or with none it will remain happy 
and contented for hours, never getting into mis- 
chief or needing the slightest attention. This is 
an extremely bad sign, and the physician discovers 
only too readily that the child is an idiot — either 
of the " cretin " or the " Mongolian " type. A 
child that will develop into a healthy adult member 
of one of the higher races should not be unnatu- 
rally " good." I have occasion to observe a baby, 
nearly two years old, that is very readily bored; 
no toy will keep it quiet for long; when it has 
been upstairs and awake for a short time it wants 
to come downstairs; and the expiry of half an 
hour downstairs finds it eager to go upstairs again. 
If it is not provided with plenty of change it soon 
becomes bored and irritable; and it is not safe to 
leave the child alone for a moment, for one never 
knows what it will be " up to " next. These char- 
acters, trying though they may sometimes be, augur 
extremely well for the future mental development 
of that child. 

I have unique opportunities, also, for the study 
of the child's father, who is more easily bored than 
any one else I know. He was always addicted to 
reading at table, and no one has ever observed 
him taking a solitary meal without a book or a 

6 



82 WORRY 

newspaper. Rather than do so he would forgo 
the meal altogether. Until he learnt to drive him- 
self, he would not ride in his own motor-car with- 
out a book. He dresses carelessly because he 
becomes bored and irritable after five minutes of 
the process. Even the pleasant organic sensations 
due to the easy digestion of a good dinner — sen- 
sations which suffice most people — do not avert 
boredom and irritability, with quite unnecessary 
worry about his work, unless he has active con- 
versation or a book to amuse him. If he ever lay 
awake in bed he would probably explode. On the 
rare occasions when he finds himself in a public 
vehicle without something to read, every stoppage 
annoys him; and after such a journey he suffers 
from cramps in the thighs and calves, due to the 
continuous contraction of the muscles of the legs 
in the attempt to accelerate the movement of the 
vehicle. He has never taken a solitary, goal-less 
walk, and when he has to walk somewhere always 
takes a book with him. For some time he thought 
it inconsiderate to keep his chauffeur waiting for 
him at a concert with " nothing to do/' until he 
discovered that this lack of occupation, so far from 
converting the man into an irritable source of 
profanity, caused him no distress whatever. Dolce 
far niente is for him a contradiction* in terms. 
Nothing exhausts him but repose. 

My friend is only an extreme case of a type 
which is highly characteristic of our time. We 
who more or less markedly belong to it know bet- 



WORRY AND BOREDOM 83 

ter than to suppose that ennui is a merely neutral 
state of mind. We know, also, that, though it 
is not identical with worry, yet it cannot long be 
endured without leading to irritability and even 
actual worry. 

I have described the type to the best of my 
ability, but I have no practical suggestions to make. 
The type should be definitely recognised, however, 
for its existence has an important bearing upon 
that exodus from the country into the cities which 
is so marked a social feature of the age. Keen 
observers are assured that civilisation is well named 
— it means city-fication — and the kind of mind 
that is produced by civilisation can only be con- 
tented in cities. An important factor in the de- 
pletion of our rural districts is the sameness, the 
tameness, the monotony of country life. City- 
dwellers acquire a factitious love of the country, 
as a change, but they would be very sorry to be 
condemned to permanent rustication. The modern 
mind is too active for country life to be tolerable. 
Before long it produces a boredom, with only tem- 
porarily pent-up irritation, which may actually 
cause more nervous wear and tear than the noise 
of " streaming London's central roar." And since 
confession is good for the soul, and especially since 
one concrete instance is worth reams of generalisa- 
tion, I may freely admit that, after working in the 
quiet of St. John's Wood until, say, four o'clock 
in the afternoon, I often find myself becoming 
bored and, in order to avert the irritability which 



84 WORRY 

would soon follow, hie me, on the smallest pretext, 
to such a neighbourhood as Oxford St., where the 
delightful crash of the motor-buses has lately made 
the Metropolis even dearer to at least one Lon- 
doner, and soon restores his mental satisfaction! 



VIII 
INSANE WORRY 

Here we must discuss the aggravated cases 
in which what we elsewhere call morbid worry 
actually reaches the pitch of insane worry, with its 
most terrible expression in all the various forms 
of melancholia itself. We may call morbid all 
worry except that which has a reasonable relation 
to some future evil that is feared. Now in certain 
cases — probably occurring only in consequence of 
actual instability of the brain, hereditary or ac- 
quired — some particular object of morbid worry 
may assume the character of what the French call 
a fixed idea. The possibility of bankruptcy, let us 
say, is so frequently presented to the mind that at 
last it becomes permanently fixed there — form- 
ing what, in other language, is called an obsession. 
Such cases, unfortunately, are far easier to describe 
than to cure; but at least it is possible to utter 
a grave warning to the reader that when he finds 
any sources of worry assuming this character of 
permanency, or all but permanency, and of an 
actual dominance over the whole sphere of con- 
sciousness — something must be done, and that 
right early. For instance, a mental specialist should 
be consulted. There is, of course, no sharp line 



86 WORRY 

between sanity and insanity, except in the public 
mind ; and it is thus impossible to assert the exist- 
ence of any definite point, even in a particular case, 
where a merely unnecessary, futile, and injurious 
worry becomes a fixed idea bordering upon the 
insane. But it is quite certain that, in many 
amongst us, the mind is able so to prey upon itself 
that at last no close observer will question the case 
to be one of insane worry. 

The actual category of insanity is indisputably 
entered when the fixed idea or. obsession is found 
to bear no reasonable correspondence with its ob- 
ject. When this point is reached, the patient — 
as he must now certainly be called — is the victim 
of what is technically called a delusion. 

Delusions may be of many kinds, including, for 
instance, delusions of grandeur, as when the pa- 
tient fancies himself to be a king or millionaire; 
but here we are concerned with the much more 
frequently encountered delusions that have the 
stamp of worry upon them. Amongst these are, 
in the first place, delusions of fear of all kinds. In 
persons — especially young persons and women — 
who have heard much of religious beliefs, these 
may be of a religious character — delusions of 
having committed the unpardonable sin, of doom 
to eternal punishment, and so forth. Or they may 
be delusions as to imminent bankruptcy, to recur to 
our former illustration, in a man whose finances are, 
and are likely to continue, perfectly satisfactory. 

Again, they may be bodily delusions. The pa- 



INSANE WORRY 87 

tient may worry from morning till night — and 
from night till morning, poor fellow — because 
he believes that he has swallowed a cannon-ball, or 
the egg of some reptile that has reached maturity 
within him and is now gnawing at his vitals. Cases 
of this kind of insane worry have sometimes been 
relieved by the performance of a sham surgical 
operation, and the subsequent demonstration of 
the offending object to the patient; but, even so, 
the delusion, or another, is apt to recur. In cases 
of this kind it will commonly be found that the 
patient's organic sense of well-being is disordered. 

There are also only too frequent cases of worry 
about some supposed disease, notably cancer, which 
have given rise to the term cancer-phobia, or fear 
of cancer. 

Extremely common and familiar to the student 
of the mind diseased are delusions of suspicion. It 
is, of course, evident that suspicion is a form of 
worry, and baseless suspicion is one of the com- 
monest forms of insane worry. Even in reasonably 
sane people of the artistic temperament, so called, 
there may occur times when they think that 
their friends are becoming cold, or repeating mali- 
cious gossip; and it is well for ordinary, sober, 
people who have such friends — often the most 
delightful and beautiful of souls — to remember 
this peculiarity of their character, and be ready to 
make allowances for it. In its definitely insane 
forms the suspicion is of a more serious kind. The 
husband doubts the fidelity of a " true and honour- 



88 WORRY 

able wife " ; there is a plot to destroy his reputa- 
tion ; attempts are being made to poison him ; his 
children are being taught to despise him, and so 
on. 

At the present time the general public is lament- 
ably ignorant of the significance of such phenomena 
as these; with the consequence that they are not 
taken seriously. Well-nigh every day we read of 
terrible domestic tragedies, such as " Triple Mur- 
der and Suicide," and the like. These are cer- 
tainly no less common than we think, and they are 
theoretically preventable. Not so long ago they 
were looked upon as crimes, pure and simple. The 
present writer possesses monographs written by his 
grandfather, for forty years visiting physician to 
the first humane asylum for the insane in Great 
Britain, 1 and accounts of criminal trials at which, 
in the witness-box, he endeavoured to avert the 
vengeance of the law from unfortunate wretches 
who had committed deeds of this kind but had 
failed to complete the act by suicide. The protests 
of humane science were commonly unavailing, 
however, even in those not distant days. Now, 
however, we recognise that, in such cases, the mur- 
der is the result of madness; and the fact — lam- 
entable or fortunate according to the manner in 
which it is dealt with — is that the symptoms of 
this madness, when it is still merely incipient and 
not dangerous, are quite sufficiently striking and 
well-marked to be recognised by any one who has 

1 The Retreat, York. 



INSANE WORRY 89 

heard of them, and who lives in daily contact with 
the patient. Therefore I say that these terrible 
tragedies are theoretically — and actually — pre- 
ventable. No one suffering from grave physical 
disease, threatening death not only to himself but 
also to his nearest and dearest, would be permitted 
to go untended, whilst displaying symptoms no 
more definite and threatening than morbid fears 
and suspicions are in these cases. It is my hope 
that, if this book serves no other purpose, at least 
it will direct public attention to the need for recog- 
nising the significance of such suspicions and the 
possibility of averting the last consequences. Many 
a man, suffering from such suspicions, and aware, 
in his lucid intervals, that they were baseless, would 
spontaneously place the facts before a doctor, if he 
had any realisation of the appalling sequel that 
threatens. 

In short, insane worry, showing itself in such 
ways as I have named, ought to be regarded as 
an invaluable danger-signal, to be immediately 
profited by, instead of being constantly treated 
with an apathy that will prove fatal. 

As to how it could be that presumably humane 
and intelligent men, such as those who undertook 
the administration of the criminal law fifty years 
ago, could have such cases as these brought before 
them and could fail to recognise that such purpose- 
less and unnatural deeds indicated insanity — as 
to how that could be I am not prepared to say. 
But it teaches a lesson of humility to us, who may 



90 WORRY 

fancy that we, at least, are too enlightened to 
make such monstrous errors. 

Lastly, there is insane worry as it is encoun- 
tered in completely developed cases of melancholia 
in our asylums. Melancholia is a general name 
for a large and various group of diseases of the 
mind. Properly speaking, it is not a disease but 
a symptom, just as we now recognise that jaundice 
is not a disease but a symptom. Nevertheless it is 
so marked and frequent and dominant a symptom 
of mental disease that the name may still be con- 
veniently employed in the old fashion. Worry, in- 
sane worry, is the characteristic of melancholia. 

Now I must not be misunderstood. I do not 
assert that worry is apt to undergo aggravation in 
certain people, and so to cause melancholia. That 
is not at all what happens. Elsewhere we discuss 
the physical states that lead to worry, and the dis- 
cussion is relevant here. We speak of mental dis- 
ease, but in reality all mental disease is physical 
disease or bodily disease, the diseased organ being 
the brain. It is not the rule that worry causes 
melancholia, but that certain physical causes pro- 
duce the brain disease or brain disorder of which 
melancholia or insane worry is the symptom. 

The physical causes of melancholia are very nu- 
merous. In recent years influenza has been respon- 
sible for a very large number of cases. Then, 
again, it is apt to occur, in brains of unstable type, 
as a consequence of physical strain. Then there 
is the melancholia that follows on childbirth, and 



INSANE WORRY 91 

that which is due to the strain of too prolonged 
nursing, and is known as lactational melancholia. 
These cases are very commonly curable. Insane 
worry is their cardinal symptom, and is frequently 
so intense as to drive the victim to suicide, unless 
this be prevented by timely precautions. When 
the physical health, including that of the brain, has 
been restored, — by recovery from the effects of 
the poison of influenza, or the effects of too fre- 
quent child-bearing, or many other causes — then 
the insane worries vanish. They never had any 
external warrant, and they cannot outlast their 
internal cause. 

The forms which insane worry may assume in 
cases of melancholia are similar to those, some of 
which have already been detailed. 

I would insist again on the all-important fact 
that insane worry is worry produced by insanity 
— not worry producing insanity. On the other 
hand, insanity so produced — and usually insanity 
of the melancholic type — must certainly be recog- 
nised, though its importance is subsidiary. 

It follows that, in general, the cure of insane 
worry consists in the cure of the brain disease of 
which it is the expression. The amateur may be 
inclined to argue with the patient, expecting to 
convince his reason that his worry is unwarranted. 
But the expert knows this to be useless ; he prefers 
milk, for instance, to argument in the case of 
insane worry. He feeds the patient liberally, and 
provides him with sleep, and when the brain is 



92 WORRY 

thus restored to health and strength, the insane 
worry bred of its weakness vanishes like the base- 
less fabric of a vision. 

Just as it is impossible to underestimate the 
importance of hard brain-work, in itself, as a cause 
of insanity, so it is easy to overestimate the im- 
portance even of worry as a cause of insanity. 
This point was discussed in the last chapter, but 
it is worth while to observe here that popular com- 
mentators — as, for instance, Lord Rosebery in a 
speech that excited much attention in October, 1906, 
— are not supported by facts when they arraign 
the pace and cares of city life as prime causes of 
the contemporary increase of insanity. The fact 
which has to be reckoned with is that the insanity 
rate is higher in rural than in urban districts. It is 
not my business to attempt an explanation of this 
fact here, but it shows, at any rate, that we may 
easily exaggerate the influence of worry as a cause 
of insanity. On the other hand, few who have not 
lived amongst the insane can adequately realise 
how terrible and abundant is the production of 
worry by insanity — i.e., by disease or disorder of 
the brain. 



IX 
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 

It is recorded of certain bees who had an oppor- 
tunity of making acquaintance with alcohol in the 
form of fermented honey that they partook greedily 
thereof, and thereafter displayed the symptoms of 
excitement and loss of equilibrium, only too often 
exhibited by creatures whose nervous organisation 
is even higher than that of a bee. But it is further 
recorded that no amount of temptation, persuasion, 
nor yet starvation, would induce those bees again 
to make adventure with the honeyed poison. 

Very different is the case with man. In all 
times and places he has been susceptible to the 
charm of drugs that markedly affect the nervous 
system — drugs of a very definite class. Beyond 
a doubt the fundamental fact of the human mind 
upon which the charm of these drugs depends is 
the fact of self-consciousness, the power of " look- 
ing before and after," which we have already seen 
to be the first condition of worry. All animals less 
than man live in and for the present. They may 
make apparent calculation for the future, but this 
is sub-conscious or instinctive — not rational. We 
may say that nervine drugs have no particular pur- 
pose or use except for the self-conscious being, 



94 WORRY 

man, whose attitude towards them markedly con- 
trasts with that of the bees whom I have cited. 

It is certain that men have used alcohol when- 
ever and wherever they have been able to make 
it, and that the alcoholic strength of the liquids 
they have consumed has been limited merely by 
their chemical knowledge. There is clear evidence 
that alcohol was extensively used in Egypt six or 
. eight thousand years ago. ^ In these days it has 
found certain rivals, some of them of very great 
importance for us. In addition to the drugs which 
properly belong to the same class as alcohol, there 
is at least one powerful drug, of unique properties, 
which is the active principle of tea and coffee, and 
is daily consumed in all but incredible quantities 
in every part of the world where it can be obtained. 
These various drugs must carefully be considered 
in the course of our study of Worry. 

They must be considered because their charm, as 
we have seen, is for man — the worrying animal 
— alone, and because it is their influence upon the 
mind that constitutes their value and their charm. 
If to alcohol and to the caffeine of tea and coffee 
we add the nicotine of tobacco and the morphine 
of opium, we find ourselves faced with a series of 
substances which are daily employed by the over- 
whelming majority of human beings, and which, 
though they are not foods, nor in any way neces- 
sary to life, play a very large part indeed in modi- 
fying the state of men's minds and tempers and 
actions — which are, after all, the only interesting 



WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 95 

things in the whole world. Now if man were no 
more mentally than even such a wonderful crea- 
ture as the bee, these drugs, I think it is safe to 
say, would have no more charm for him than for 
the bee. But man is a reflecting mind ; he can and 
does conjure up the past and anticipate the future ; 
and in both cases there is the constant risk that 
his so doing will arouse unpleasant emotions — in 
a word, that he will worry about the past or the 
future or both. As long as man is man he will 
continue to live less in the present than out of the 
present. Now the drugs which man employs so 
largely have been welcomed by him not on any 
theoretical nor economic grounds, but simply and 
solely because he finds that they exercise an in- 
fluence, which he rightly or wrongly welcomes, 
upon the emotional tone of his mind. Every one 
is familiar with the famous German students' 
drinking song for a bass voice, the substance of 
which is the statement that every kind of fear and 
care and worry vanishes whilst " drinking, drink- 
ing, drinking." There you have the facts in a nut- 
shell. There are scores and scores of drugs which 
exercise marked properties upon the muscles, the 
nerve ends, the glands, the heart, the lungs, and 
all the other tissues and organs of the body. There 
are hosts of drugs which markedly affect, in vari- 
ous ways, the lower levels of the nervous system. 
But survey mankind from the dawn of civilisation 
till to-day and from China to Peru — you will not 
find that any of these drugs has taken a place in his 



96 WORRY 

life. The drugs which he wants and has taken 
good care to obtain are those which affect con- 
sciousness — those which modify the emotional 
tone of his mind, those which banish care and 
drown sorrow, those which give him what he values 
more than any other thing that can be named, the 
organic sense of well-being with which life is worth 
living, and without which life is worthless. 

After what has already been said the reader will 
not expect me to launch into a general denunciation 
of all these drugs. Some may say that it is not 
consonant with human dignity to drink alcohol, 
smoke tobacco and opium, or sip tea; man should 
be above the need of modifying his consciousness 
by these artificial means. This argument may be 
supported by the general conviction that the use of 
these drugs has always worked, and still works, a 
great deal of harm. But, on the other hand, many 
considerations may be urged and must here be 
detailed. In the first place, it is certain beyond 
certainty that neither denunciation, nor warning, 
nor legislation, nor any other measures whatever 
will wean mankind as a whole from its addiction to 
one or other of these drugs. Wherever and when- 
ever they have been obtainable they have been used. 
They are more obtainable to-day than ever before, 
and are more widely used than ever before. The 
reasonable argument would seem to be that they 
must serve some human purpose. If their effects 
were noxious in all respects, they would scarcely 
have been heard of. The fact of their employment, 



WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 97 

universal as it is, constitutes a proof of the fact 
that men find — or seem to find — them more or 
less useful. Perhaps, then, it will be better for us 
to recognise these facts, and to ask ourselves 
whether it is possible to distinguish between one 
of these drugs and another, to discover whether 
there is any which is wholly useful, or at any rate, 
to arrange them in some sort of scale which will 
indicate the proportions between the good and the, 
evil that they accomplish. 

And, first of all, let us ask ourselves exactly 
what it is that they do. The word commonly ap- 
plied to these drugs is stimulants, and it is unques- 
tionably true that, for many purposes and on many 
occasions, men welcome substances which increase 
the rapidity of their vital processes. Such sub- 
stances are conspicuously contained in many ar- 
ticles of diet; but when we come to consider the 
leading case of alcohol, we shall find that the com- 
mon belief requires criticism. Alcohol is commonly 
spoken and thought of as a stimulant, and we 
know, of course, that the first result of its action 
is to cause an increased rapidity of the pulse, an 
increased activity of many glands, and a very 
definite degree of mental excitement. In these 
respects alcohol is strictly comparable with opium, 
which plays a corresponding part in the life of 
an enormous section of mankind. It may be 
said, in general, that a race employs either alcohol 
or opium, but not both, for both are not needed. 
Whether the one or the other be used, however, 

7 



98 WORRY 

it is not long before the stage of stimulation or 
excitement gives place to one which is distinguished 
by precisely opposite characters. The tide of life 
now flows more slowly, the various physical func- 
tions are depressed, the mind becomes less active, 
and if a sufficiency of either drug has been taken, 
sleep or unconsciousness ensues. If the dose be 
well calculated, this last stage may not be quickly 
reached, but the subject will remain for a long 
period in a state which indicates that he has taken 
a sedative, and not a stimulant. 

Now no man takes a sedative in order that his 
pulse may beat more slowly, or in order that the 
number of his respirations per minute may be re- 
duced. He takes a sedative in order that he may 
attain that particular state of mind which it is the 
characteristic of a sedative to produce. Undoubt- 
edly alcohol may be taken at times for its supposed 
stimulant effect upon the powers of work, but it is 
indisputable that the action of alcohol and of 
opium, which has led these drugs to play their part 
in human life, is their power of producing peace of 
mind. That is why I must consider them here. 
What men want in all times and places is hap- 
piness — conscious and self-conscious happiness. 
Yet, because they are men, able to look before and 
after, this state which they desire is constantly 
threatened by the presence of regrets, fears, and 
cares, depression and apprehension — in a word, 
by worry. It has long since been discovered that 
alcohol and opium are antagonistic to worry. 



WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 99 

Never yet was the unhappy state of mind that 
would not yield to an adequate dose of one or 
other of them. I submit, then, that there is a very 
grave and very stupid fallacy in the common con- 
ception of alcohol in the West or opium in the East 
as stimulants. They are taken and used not as 
stimulants, but as sedatives. 

In order to clear up our views on this subject 
it is necessary to see whether they are in accord 
with what is actually known concerning the actions 
of these drugs on the body. Now, it has been 
demonstrated in the case of both of them that their 
stimulation of the body is, so to speak, preliminary 
and accidental, and that a depression or soothing 
or sedation of the bodily functions, and with them 
the mental functions, is their essential character. 
As every one knows, opium is very largely used in 
medicine; more especially nowadays in the form 
of its chief active principle morphia. But no doctor 
thinks of morphia as a stimulant, or uses it as a 
stimulant. The doctor is aware of its preliminary 
stimulant action, and takes measures to alleviate 
or obliterate that action in order that he may ob- 
tain the sedative action which is the true character 
of the drug and which he desires. 

Extremely significant, but yet unknown to the 
public in general, are the similar facts in regard 
to alcohol. This is a substance of paradoxes; in 
general, what it does is just the reverse of what 
it seems to do. It is still called a stimulant, as it 
was half a century ago. At that time not only was 

LOFC, 



100 WORRY 

it called a stimulant, but it was widely used as a 
stimulant by doctors. It was supposed to increase 
vital activity in all directions, and was used as an 
aid to the body in its fight against disease of all 
kinds. But in these days of scientific medicine our 
whole conception of alcohol has changed. As we 
have already seen, the public speaks of it as a 
stimulant, but, in point of fact, uses it as a seda- 
tive — uses it because it is able to calm the worry- 
ing mind, to banish care, and to bring peace. 
Similarly, nowadays, the most scientific physicians 
both speak of alcohol and use it as a sedative. 
Some think, for instance, that when the body tem- 
perature tends to become too high in consequence of 
the excessive activity of the vital processes, alcohol 
may be of use, for it lowers the temperature. 
Similarly, it may produce sleep, both in fever and 
at other times. True, like many other sedatives, 
it causes a period of preliminary excitement, but 
that must be shortened or neutralised as far as 
possible. 

If now we turn to the fundamental chemistry of 
alcohol and opium, we find that it confirms my 
doctrines as to the true character of these drugs 
and as to the true explanation of their universal 
employment. The fundamental fact of the chem- 
istry of the body is the fact of burning, combustion, 
or oxidation. The more rapidly we burn, the 
more rapidly we live. Both alcohol and opium have 
been proved to interfere with oxidation or com- 
bustion in the body. They markedly retard the 



WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 101 

rate at which the oxygen we take in from the air 
is combined with the tissues. In the midst of the 
confusion which reigns as to the classification of 
drugs, it seems to me that we have here a funda- 
mental, chemical distinction. The drug the net 
result of which is to increase the rate at which we 
burn away is essentially a stimulant ; the drug the 
net result of whose action is to diminish the rate 
at which we burn away is essentially a sedative. 
For convenience we may apply the term pseudo- 
stimulant to those sedatives, such as alcohol, opium, 
or morphia, which display a preliminary transient 
stage of stimulation. 

Ere we conclude it will be necessary to pro- 
nounce judgment upon these substances, and the 
recent additions to the same group. But before 
doing so, we must consider the case of caffeine 
(or theine), which is the active principle of tea 
and coffee, as also of the kola nut and Paraguay 
tea or Mate, and of some other substances which 
are similarly employed in various parts of the 
world. The importance of the subject may be 
suggested by the fact that of tea alone there is 
consumed in Great Britain about four million 
gallons every day. Consider that an ordinary cup 
of tea contains about a grain of caffeine, and then 
calculate how many millions of grains of this 
potent alkaloid daily enter into the blood of the 
British people. To this add all the caffeine con- 
tained in coffee, and it will be evident that the 
subject is of some practical interest. Now the 



102 WORRY 

contrast between alcohol and caffeine very soon 
suffices to show how foolishly the word stimulant 
is commonly employed. Caffeine is a true stimu- 
lant and has no other action. It has been proved 
to increase the amount of combustion in the body 
in whatever dose it be taken; it tends to raise 
the temperature. Its truly stimulant action is still 
more conspicuous if we consider the mind, and 
mind is the only important matter. The larger the 
dose of opium or alcohol that be taken, the more 
certainly and rapidly will you sleep; the larger 
the dose of this true stimulant that be taken, the 
more certainly and persistently will you keep 
awake. About fifteen grains of caffeine will en- 
tirely abolish both the desire for and the possibility 
of sleep, for a whole night and longer, and will 
make it possible to do hard intellectual work at 
high speed, and of the best quality possible for 
the brain in question, during the hours which 
sleep would otherwise have certainly claimed. 
These facts will abundantly suffice to show how 
superficial and stupid is the common application 
of the same term " stimulant " to drugs so pro- 
foundly contrasted as alcohol and opium on the 
one hand, and caffeine on the other. I am tempted 
to go much further into this question because the 
distinction which I have demonstrated is not rec- 
ognised even in text-books that deal with these 
subjects. And yet it is a fundamental one. What 
could well be more absurd than to apply one and 
the same name on the one hand to drugs which 



WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 103 

in sufficient doses will infallibly arrest conscious- 
ness, even in cases of great bodily pain or of 
violent mental excitement or both; and, on the 
other hand, to a drug which in adequate doses 
will infallibly prevent that normal recurrence of 
unconsciousness which we call sleep? Obviously 
there is no word that can possibly include both 
sets of drugs, unless it be the word antagonists. 

Of nicotine, the active principle of tobacco, it 
is unfortunately impossible to speak in any such 
dogmatic fashion. The statements I have made 
regarding opium, alcohol, and caffeine are scientific 
facts, admitted and recognised by all competent 
students. There is no dispute about them — a 
circumstance which makes it the more remarkable, 
perhaps, that the radical opposition between the 
sets of facts in the two cases is so commonly 
ignored. But nicotine appears to act in various 
fashions upon various persons. For some it ap- 
pears to be a stimulant, for others a sedative, and 
the individual differences have not yet been ex- 
plained. In passing, then, to consider those ques- 
tions for which all that has been said hitherto is 
merely preparation, we shall find that it is impos- 
sible to lay down the law regarding nicotine as 
might be desired. 

These questions, of course, are concerned with 
the actual as distinguished from the apparent value 
of the representative drugs which have been con- 
sidered. Here is this great fact of worry, fear, 
regret, apprehension, and grief, which constantly 



104 WORRY 

attends upon or threatens the mind of man and 
against which these and many other drugs are 
known to operate. Is their use worth while? 
* Now if the reader remembers or believes nothing 
else whatever that I say here on this subject, or 
that I have said or may say on any other subject 
anywhere else, I beseech him at least to believe 
this: the habitual use of sedatives — such as 
alcohol, opium, morphia, sulphonal, trional, ver- 
onal, paraldehyde, chloral, cocaine, and their allies, 
— is to be condemned without qualification as false 
in principle and fatal in result. It is true that these 
drugs will one and all relieve worry, banish care, 
and procure peace of mind, but it is as true that 
the worry, the care, and the dispeace will return, 
bringing seven devils with them, and that the 
latter end of the man who uses them for this 
purpose is not peace. They are false friends. For 
every unit of mental unrest that they remove they 
will inevitably create many such units. They are 
false in principle because they make no attack 
whatever upon the cause of the worry. That 
cause may be ill-health; these drugs will most 
assuredly aggravate it. That cause may be over- 
work; these drugs will most assuredly lessen the 
power of work. That cause may be the loss of 
the organic sense of well-being, which is the first 
and only condition of bodily and mental happi- 
ness; these drugs will, for the time, by their 
sedative action arrest those internal sensations 
which are found displeasing, and which make men 



WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 105 

into pessimists, but the after result of their action is 
invariably to cause these sensations to return more 
abundantly than ever, demanding a larger and an 
accelerated second dose of the drug. Worry is 
curable because it has causes which are removable. 
In all ages and places, the chief cure adopted by 
men has been the use of these sedatives, which are 
no cure, because they do not begin to remove the 
causes of worry. They merely drown or submerge 
the worry for a time, as ill weeds may be sub- 
merged with water. But when the drug or the 
water has passed away the ill weeds are found to 
have grown apace. 

In western countries generally, alcohol is at 
once the commonest cure for worry, and amongst 
the most potent of the causes of worry. It is not 
my concern here to speak in detail of the effect 
of this and similar drugs upon character, upon 
the ability to work, or even upon physical health, 
except in so far as these influence the state of the 
mind. The great fact is that, ignoring all external 
considerations, and directing our attention solely 
to the actions of these drugs upon the body and the 
mind, we find that their sedative action upon worry 
is such as to be invariably and necessarily followed 
by bodily and mental changes of which the product 
is worry multiplied manifold. If my condemna- 
tion of the use of these drugs, in ministering to 
the mind diseased or distressed, be less unqualified 
or less vigorous than it might be, the cause is to 
be found not in my estimate of the facts, but in 



106 WORRY 

my defective power of expressing that estimate. 
I accuse these drugs as irreconcilable foes of human 
happiness ; so essentially detestable that their mas- 
querade as friends of man can scarcely make one 
detest them more. 

Let us turn now from the sedatives to the 
stimulants, the terms being used not in the com- 
mon unscientific, but in the uncommon scientific 
sense. Must caffeine, as represented by tea and 
coffee, fall under a like condemnation? This 
would be somewhat paradoxical if it were so, be- 
cause we have already seen that these two groups 
of drugs are essentially opposed in their physio- 
logical properties. The sedatives we have con- 
demned because they do nothing for the life of 
the body but are opposed to it. V The stimulant, 
caffeine, on the other hand, as we have seen, 
favours the life of the body, promotes the processes 
of combustion on which life depends, increases 
vitality, and that power to work which is the ex- 
pression of vitality. Everywhere men find that 
a cup of tea or coffee is refreshing; it produces 
renewed vigour; it heightens the sense of organic 
well-being, the consciousness of fitness and ca- 
pacity. This is utterly distinct from the action of 
alcohol or opium in deadening the sense of ill- 
being. Tea antagonises the sense of ill-being not 
by deadening one's consciousness of it, but by 
stirring the sources of vitality and by the pos- 
itive substitution for it of that sense of well- 
being which is the index of vitality. Here is a 



WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 107 

true stimulant — something that favours life. 
How, then, will its use affect worry and the 
causes of worry? Is the plan of employing it 
superior to the plan of employing sedatives or is 
it even worse? 

The answer is, of course, that the plan is im- 
measurably superior. But before I insist upon this 
assertion, let me make certain qualifications. In 
the first place, I recognise that the ideal would be 
neither to need nor to employ any drugs whatso- 
ever; but here our concern is not with the ideal, 
but the real. Again, I will admit, of course, that 
every good thing — except, perhaps, the spiritual 
goods, like love — depends for its goodness upon 
a fitness of proportion. The sun is the source and 
condition of all earthly life, yet men have died of 
sunstroke. Caffeine is a good thing in its essence 
because, like sunlight itself, it is a true stimulant 
in that it favours the essential processes of life; 
but, like sunlight itself, it is capable of abuse, 
though the remarkable fact is that it is very diffi- 
cult to obtain symptoms of abuse even when this 
drug is employed in large quantities. Tea and 
coffee have had many hard words said of them. 
The trouble is that people will not distinguish. 
Tea, for instance, as commonly understood in this 
country, is more nearly a decoction than an infu- 
sion of the tea leaf, and contains besides the theine 
or caffeine a very large proportion of tannin or 
tannic acid. Now the action of this substance 
upon the body is wholly deleterious; it interferes 



108 WORRY 

with the activity of every tissue with which it 
comes in contact; it markedly interferes with the 
digestion in at least two ways — first, by tanning 
many of the proteids of the food, so that, like other 
forms of leather, they can scarcely be digested at 
all; and secondly, by interfering with the produc- 
tion of the digestive juices by the walls of the 
stomach. As long as the present vitiated taste for 
tea persists, large numbers of people will continue 
to do themselves great injury by drinking it; but 
it is ludicrously unscientific to assume that the evil 
consequences of drinking improperly made tea are 
necessarily to be attributed to the valuable caffeine 
which it contains. If we consider the gigantic 
amount of tea and coffee that we daily drink and 
allow for the injurious effects of the tannin which 
abounds in improperly made tea — that is to say, 
in nine-tenths of all tea — we must acquit caffeine 
of any very deadly properties. There will remain 
to its credit the many desirable consequences with 
which every one is familiar. 

I assert, then, that whereas all sedatives are to 
be condemned in the relief of worry on the ground 
that they do not attack the causes of worry, on the 
ground that, in proportion to their immediate po- 
tency, they establish a craving for themselves, and 
on the further ground that their after effects 
invariably include the production of more worry 
than was relieved in the first place, the stimulant 
caffeine, on account of which we consume so much 
tea and coffee, may be excused, if not justified and 



WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 109 

applauded. Taken in reasonable quantities, such 
as very few people desire to exceed, it differs fun- 
damentally from all the sedatives in that it does 
not produce a need for a continuous increase of • 
the dose. It relieves worry not by a temporary 
and actually nutritive and fostering submergence 
of it, but by attacking its causes. The man who is « 
worried because his work is too much for him finds 
his work facilitated and its accomplishment accel- 
erated under the influence of caffeine. Assuming 
that his work ought to be done, what better way 
of dealing with his worry could be conceived? 
Again, a great deal of worry is caused by defective 
vitality. The man of radiant health and almost 
offensive energy, who is " always at it," has no 
time to worry. He has too many other things to 
do. Mental unrest afflicts rather those whose vital 
processes are slower, and especially those whose 
vital processes are too slow. Under the influence 
of a true stimulant, such persons may often be 
tided over a period of threatening depression 
simply in virtue of the fact that their vital proc- 
esses — which have become too tardy — are accel- 
erated, with a consequent access of energy and a 
more due prominence of the organic sense of 
well-being. 

In so far, then, as the subject of these articles 
is concerned with the use of drugs, we may say 
that it is necessary first to search below appear- 
ances, and to distinguish between drugs that are 
really sedatives and those that are really stimulants. 



110 



WORRY 



The sedatives are to be condemned without reserve. 
This condemnation applies to tobacco in the case 
of those persons, relatively few, I think, on whom 
it acts as a true sedative, retarding vital processes ; 
but it is so difficult to find the truth about tobacco 
that I regret having to mention it at all. On the 
other hand, the true nerve stimulant, caffeine — 
which is in a class by itself — cannot be similarly 
condemned, but its judicious use may be regarded 
as justifiable and profitable. 

In surveying this chapter my fear is that any 
portions of it may have prevented me from throw- 
ing into the boldest relief what is by far the most 
important fact that it contains — the fact that 
alcohol has no place, use, or purpose, in the relief 
of worry, and that its so-called use — in this con- 
nection, at any rate — is never anything but abuse 
or misuse, always dangerous, always productive of 
more evil than it relieves, and only too frequently 
suicidal. 



X 

WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION 

It is very commonly, yet curiously, supposed 
that the actions of men and women are determined 
by their beliefs — that the will, with all its results, 
is the servant of the intellect. Students of the 
mind, however, know that this is not so; the rela- 
tion of the intellect to the will is merely that of an 
adviser or guide which investigates and suggests 
the means by which the will may accomplish its 
will. Creeds, beliefs, opinions, and what is com- 
monly understood by education — these are not 
the mainsprings of human action. Any belief or 
opinion may act as a pilot, but something else is 
the gale. 

Plainly, it is a matter of the utmost moment to 
discover this something else which determines the 
acts of men and so gives human life its characters 
and decides its consequences. The man in the 
street may know that psychology is the study of 
the mind, and by the mind he understands the 
reason or the intellect ; but psychologists of to-day 
are far more concerned with other aspects and atti- 
tudes of the human spirit, since they realise that 
elsewhere than in merely intellectual processes are 
to be found the causes of human action. The 



112 WORRY 

extraordinary idea that the mind consists of the 
intellect alone still pervades the legal and popular 
notion of insanity, which considers that the hold- 
ing of erroneous opinions is the sole test of insanity, 
and is unaware that a man may have a keen and 
balanced intellect, and yet be utterly and danger- 
ously mad. 

In all that has been said I am trying to show the 
importance of my present subject, as we shall 
immediately see. The real causes of human action 
are not rational convictions, such as the conviction 
that two and two make four, which in themselves 
are powerless to affect the will, and have never 
yet caused (though they continually direct) any 
human action whatever; but are states of feeling 
or emotion. Emotion, as the word suggests, is 
the cause of human motion: the emotion of love 
causes motion towards the beloved object; the 
emotion of fear causes motion from the feared 
object; the emotional state known as courage will 
cause one act, the emotional state known as hate 
will cause another. The mainspring of will is 
emotion. Students of the mind diseased are ac- 
quainted with cases of what they call apathy, which 
literally means no feeling. These result in what is 
called aboulia, which means no will. The utterly 
apathetic person does nothing. Feeling neither 
the emotion of hate, nor that of love, or ambition, 
or fear, or apprehension, or jealousy, or even a 
desire to live — such a person becomes like a veg- 
etable. Danger does not affect him. The cry of 



WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION 113 

fire will not cause him to stir a finger. He will 
remain motionless whilst his child is drowning 
before his eyes, and even ambition, the last infir- 
mity of noble minds, stirs him not at all. He is 
in the state aimed at by the ascetic, Buddhist, or 
Christian, who has conquered all desire, and who 
has therefore conquered his own will. He has no 
emotions, no motives, and therefore no motions, 
which are the outward manifestations of will. 

Plainly, therefore, any one who desires to under- 
stand or explain human life, to read the hearts of 
men, like Cassius, to know why men and women 
do wise or foolish things, must make himself a 
student not of the part of the mind which we call 
the intellect, but of the part which we call the 
emotional nature. This alone will give him the 
key to human action, since this alone is the cause of 
human action. 

Books have been written on the manner in which 
the acts of men and women are determined by 
love, by fear, by ambition, by the desire to assert 
self, and by the desire to renounce self. But no 
one has yet written a book on the way in which the 
acts of men are determined by one of the most 
potent and frequent and malign of all emotional 
states — that state which we call worry. If it 
were possible, I should devote a whole book to this 
new, and yet old subject; but, as things are, I must 
content myself with a brief chapter, hoping to be 
suggestive rather than final in my treatment of 
this vast subject. 

8 



114 WORRY 

Sometimes the influence of worry upon the con- 
duct of its victim may be negative rather than pos- 
itive; its action is paralytic. This consequence of 
worry is most commonly manifested in those who 
lead the intellectual life. The man who has a book 
to write, or plans to make, or a practical problem 
to solve by his wits, may find that worry paralyses 
thought. He " cannot give his mind to his work/' 
The power of sustained attention to his business is 
utterly destroyed by his emotional state of mind. 

There can be no question that the world has 
suffered incalculable loss by the influence of worry 
upon men of genius. The typical genius — such 
as Schubert, let us say — is a man little appreci- 
ated by his own age, and little fit for the practical 
tide of life. He is constantly the prey of worry — 
temporarily eased, perhaps, as in Schubert's case, 
by the benefactions of a publisher who gave him 
ten pence apiece for songs to which men will listen 
as long as ears can hear. The idea of a home for 
geniuses has often been ridiculed, and people have 
declared that no works of art would be produced 
save under the influence of the need of money, 
forgetting that the true genius must do his work 
or die. One of our indictments against worry, 
then, is certainly its paralytic effect upon the most 
valuable functions of the human mind, and espe- 
cially upon the creation of works of genius — the 
worth of which in human life is daily increasing. 

We are all familiar with the paralytic effect of 
worry in other conditions. Excess of self-con- 



WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION 115 

sciousness tends to produce what we call "ner- 
vousness," and every one who has played games or 
spoken or sung or acted in public knows what are 
the effects of this minor species of worry. In 
games we know that confidence is half the battle; 
that " nervousness/' lack of confidence, worry 
about one's capacity, and apprehension of failure 
are all but certain to produce that which they fear. 
If the relative importance of the subject merited 
further consideration it would be of interest to 
consider how it is that worry is enabled to inter- 
fere in those delicate muscular co-ordinations upon 
which success in most games of skill depends, and 
how it is that lack of worry, and, better still, the 
presence of its opposite — a judicious self-confi- 
dence — provides the best condition for success, 
whether in singing or playing billiards or public 
speaking. But it is not with these negative influ- 
ences of worry upon human actions that I am 
here mainly concerned, interesting though they are, 
and serious though they may often be in many a 
case. 

Having shown that the positive acts of men are 
determined by their emotions, I wish to classify 
and describe the kinds of acts that men perform 
under the influence of the emotion we are study- 
ing. In general, it may be safely said of any 
emotion, such as love or even its opposite, hate, 
that it may lead to desirable acts or to undesirable 
acts. This is obviously true of the case of love, 
and is no less true of its opposite, for hatred of 



116 WORRY 

evil may lead to desirable action, just as other kinds 
of hate may lead to evil action. But I summarily 
assert that the influence of worry upon the will of 
man is wholly and invariably bad. No qualifica- 
tion is needed for the assertion that this potent 
motor force invariably tends to drive us to wrong 
action. 

The very smallest indictment to be laid against 
the door of worry in this respect is that it leads to 
too hasty action. In general, we know that we 
want happiness of one kind or another. It is the 
business of the reason to decide, in any given case, 
how that end may best be attained. Under the 
pressure of worry we only too often act hastily 
and without adequate use of the reason, and so 
we do the wrong thing. We feel that it is far 
better to make some decision — any decision — 
than to continue in a state of suspense, doubt, 
anxiety, worry; and so we make our decision 
before we are able to ensure that it is the wisest 
decision. Here the real motor, precipitating our 
action, is worry, and the consequence, as like as 
not, will be yet more worry. 

But the graver aspects of the influence of worry 
upon human conduct will be realised if we consider 
the fashion in which worry causes us to meet every- 
day difficulties of life. When the mind is at peace 
with itself and circumstances, the ordinary calls of 
life upon our patience, our forbearance, our per- 
severance, and our power of overcoming difficulties, 
are adequately met. We do not lose our sleep, 



WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION 117 

or fly to alcohol or other drugs; and a difficulty 
may even act as a not unwelcome stimulus, fit to 
make us realise the best of which we are capable. 
But contrast the fashion in which the victim of 
worry meets life's demands. Even the slightest 
of them suffice to make him irritable. Now, irri- 
tability is a terribly powerful influence for evil in 
too many lives, and its chief cause is worry. I will 
not forget that many a man and many a woman 
becomes irritable in consequence of various kinds 
of physical disease, or in consequence of insomnia. 
But it is pre-eminently the worried man that is 
the irritable man. Let us, then, consider a typical 
instance of the practical influence of worry upon 
conduct. 

The worried business man returns home in the 
evening, but brings his business worries with him. 
When he is not worried he is a considerate and 
affectionate husband and father; his wife's little 
requests, the noise of his children's play, do not 
disturb his equanimity. On the contrary, it is a 
pleasure to be able to serve his wife, and an enjoy- 
ment to hear his children enjoying themselves. 
But how different is the effect of precisely the 
same influences upon the worried man! This 
noise in which he would otherwise find the sweetest 
music falls upon other ears — ears made hyper- 
sensitive, no doubt, by the strain to which his ner- 
vous system has been subjected; and he displays 
what physiologists call the " irritability of weak- 
ness." The noise is actually louder than it would 



118 WORRY 

otherwise appear, and he cannot tolerate it. The 
wise wife may soon see that " something has wor- 
ried Jack to-day/' and she will prevent her children 
from exposing themselves to the consequences, 
whilst she will defer her request for a new hat until 
a more auspicious occasion. But this is not always 
possible, nor is it always done when it is possible; 
and the result will be disaster. The noisy little boy 
may receive a blow when he expected a smile, and 
his drum may come to an untimely end. Doubtless 
the father's worries depend upon the fact that he 
has to support a wife and children whom he loves ; 
but the influence of worry is invariably malign, and 
will show its malignancy even in the case of those 
whose interests have caused it. If the worry is a 
daily and persistent force, the children may be- 
come intolerable; their father seems to love them 
less, and therefore they love him less. They suffer, 
and so does he. 

But the burden is far worse for the wife and 
mother, even though she is better able to under- 
stand its cause. The very sight of her may suffice, 
or almost suffice, to rouse the latent irritation of 
which worry is the cause, and happiness leaves the 
home. 

To these considerations we must add the conse- 
quences of that very constant foe to womankind — 
domestic worry. The burden of life by no means 
falls entirely upon the sex which groans most 
loudly under it. It is the peculiar character of a 
woman's work, of course, that it is never done. 



WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION 119 

The man has at least the change, as a rule, from 
the environment of business to the environment of 
home, and this may suffice — in accordance with 
what was said when we were discussing holidays 
— to change the mental currents, so that business 
worries disappear. The woman has not this ad- 
vantage; the environment of home and of busi- 
ness are one and the same for her. The escape 
from domestic worry is thus specially difficult. 
The conscientious, diligent, and hard-pressed 
housekeeper of all ages and places is apt, like 
Martha, to be troubled about many things; and 
small blame to her. That she should become irri- 
table in consequence of domestic worry is quite 
inevitable at times, and then everybody suffers — 
husband, children, servants, and herself. These 
are all commonplaces, I admit, but a necessary 
condition for the cure of domestic worry and its 
consequence is an impartial, detached recognition 
of the facts and their origin. It may fairly be 
said, I think, that women have only themselves to 
blame for a very considerable proportion of domes- 
tic worry, with its consequences of irritability and 
bad temper, leading to worse things. Even after 
fully recognising that the ordinary housewife is 
specially subject, at any rate at times, to unavoid- 
able worry, we must surely grant that the common 
practice of living up to the very limit of one's 
means, if not beyond it, is responsible for a great 
deal of woman's worry that might be avoided. 
One says especially woman's worry, because it 



120 WORRY 

would appear that the wife, rather than the hus- 
band, is more often responsible for the neglect of 
that margin of income which, as Mr. Micawber 
knew, spells happiness. Hence it is worth while 
yet again to point out the commonplace facts — 
that the happiness attained by keeping three ser- 
vants when one can only afford two is most lament- 
ably outweighed, not merely by the worry in- 
volved in the incessant effort to make both ends 
meet, but also by the consequences of that worry 
upon sleep, health, digestion, and temper — these, 
again, injuring every member of the family, and 
possibly leading to its utter destruction. 

For it cannot be doubted that mere petty worry, 
acting like the " cumulative poisons " with which 
doctors are familiar, only too often forms a neces- 
sary link in the chain of causation which leads to 
estrangement between parents and children, or 
estrangement between themselves, leading to sep- 
aration or even divorce. This is a terrible in- 
dictment against worry that it not infrequently 
destroys the family, which is the necessary unit of 
society, and the stability and security of which con- 
stitutes the first condition of any stable and secure 
society. 

We have already spoken of worry as the state 
of emotion which often produces in men the will 
to end their own lives. 

Having considered the fashion in which worry 
affects the actions of the individual as an indi- 
vidual, and his or her actions as a member and 



WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION 121 

constituent of the family, let us observe how society 
as a whole is affected by the action of worry upon 
its individual units. 

What has already been said will suffice to enable 
us to realise that part of the cost of worry is a great 
loss of individual and therefore of social efficiency. 
It is commonly supposed that the welfare and suc- 
cess of an individual is his affair alone, just as 
it is commonly supposed that a nation can thrive 
only by injuring other nations. But it is not so. 
On the contrary, it is certain that the failure, the 
premature death, the diminished efficiency of any 
individual, act in general as an injury to every 
member of the society of which he forms part. A 
force, then, which makes for inefficiency, often 
paralysing and arresting or destroying desirable 
acts and accomplishments on the part of individ- 
uals, has a personal interest even for the fortunate 
few whom it does not directly affect. The malign 
action of worry upon the deeds of individuals must 
be reckoned, then, as an injury to the body politic. 
Worry raises the death rate, very notably the dis- 
ease rates, for each of which, and especially the 
latter, society has to pay. It raises the accident 
rates : we have seen how it interferes with the ner- 
vous balance and co-ordination, and with the self- 
confidence which are necessary in all games, arts, 
and duties involving muscular skill. Society, also, 
has to pay for the hospitals and the asylums and 
many other charities, the need for which is largely 
increased by worry. The individual, the family, 



122 WORRY 

and society at large, then, are injured by the effects 
of worry upon human actions. 

There remains one other notable fashion in which 
worry affects human action, and, as in every other 
case, affects it for the worse. Our final subject 
here, then, is worry in its relation to the great 
goddess of getting on. Worry as the servant of 
this goddess seems to be more potent nowadays 
than ever heretofore, and it is important for us to 
consider how far this kind of worry — worry about 
getting on, or ambitious worry — depends upon a 
false conception of the true means to our common 
end — life and happiness. 

I decline to say that this kind of worry depends 
upon a false philosophy. In all likelihood the 
reader is familiar with the most popular books of 
Dr. Samuel Smiles, such as " Self Help." Since 
his death we have read many jibes at the lowness 
of his ideals and the contemptible character of his 
teaching. But, after all, those who penned these 
jibes would doubtless have jumped at the chance 
of bettering themselves as readily as their fellows. 
I venture to say that every normal person, in virtue 
of the common human inheritance, has a greater 
or less desire to get on ; ambition is the last infirm- 
ity of noble minds. We desire to get on simply 
because we suppose that in doing so we shall get 
happiness, and it is quite idle to pretend that, up 
to a point, our argument is not well-founded. We 
are familiar with the millionaire who assures us 
that he was happier as a ragged boy, and we do 



WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION 123 

not doubt his word. He speaks of the burden of 
wealth, but we do not observe that he seeks to 
relieve himself of the burden. We say that there 
is a compensating balance in life, and we quite 
properly recognise that the poor man does not 
suffer from his poverty as the rich man would do 
if his riches left him. We recognise that there is 
a principle of adaptation to the environment, and 
that one does not miss what one has never known. 
But this very principle — that happiness as condi- 
tioned by material circumstances depends very 
largely upon what one is accustomed to — is in 
itself the very best argument for the desire to get 
on, since he who succeeds in getting on is con- 
stantly enjoying new advantages which, just be- 
cause they are new, mean much more to him than 
they do to others born with a silver spoon in their 
mouths. As far as I can learn from biology, 
Nature not only sanctions, but also aids and abets 
in every possible way the desire for happiness, and 
if getting on is going to serve happiness, I am not 
prepared outright to condemn it. 

But that is the whole question. It is an almost 
universal human character to glorify the means 
at the ultimate expense of the end. We see it in 
its most piquant form in the miser, starving, shiv- 
ering, dirty, unattended, clutching his useless gold. 
We see it in the bibliomaniac who purchases first 
editions, and covers his shelves with wisdom, into 
which he never dips. It is enough for him to own 
the book. He does not care to read it, much less 



124 WORRY 

would he disfigure its immaculate pages with mar- 
ginal notes. And the case is the same with " get- 
ting on." It is not an end in itself, but a means — 
and certainly not an entirely contemptible and 
negligible means — to the true end of happiness ; 
but our general tendency betrays us here, and we 
make of the means an end. Happiness or no hap- 
piness, we will " get on," and it is at this point 
that worry takes its place. 

To worry about getting on is plainly to forfeit 
happiness on account of that which is to bring hap- 
piness. This is no bargain for a rational man. 
Observe that I am not speaking here of the attempt 
to earn a competence or such an income as may 
make marriage possible. Worry on these scores 
may be recognised as futile, but it can scarcely be 
called irrational. The irrational worry about get- 
ting on is that which implies the inability to be 
content or to enjoy the present. Directly it is 
so defined, every one must admit the justice of the 
adjective " irrational " ; besides, it is of its very 
nature to be deprived of satisfaction, for it has no 
definite goal. I think there is little doubt that this 
kind of worry is a very insidious trap for many 
young men whose incomes are not fixed, but vary 
in proportion to the amount of labour which they 
are prepared to expend. The fact that money is 
only a means to an end tends to be forgotten. The 
symbol, as ever with symbols, is exalted at the ex- 
pense of the thing symbolised. Men who have no 
occasion to overwork, find themselves prematurely 



WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION 125 

senile, or temporarily incapacitated, in consequence 
of the extraordinary delusion that it is a man's duty 
to make as big an income as he can. I do not say 
that this doctrine is definitely formulated by all of 
us, but in point of fact we nearly all subscribe to it. 
We know perfectly well that the income is not an 
end in itself, but we know that it is a very effective 
means to the only end we care about, and before 
we know where we are we have been trapped 
into the practical, if not the theoretical, acceptance 
of the doctrine that the means of happiness are 
worth purchasing at the cost of happiness. 

We shall afterwards see that the cure of this 
kind of worry is such commonsense as that of 
Thoreau, Stevenson, and Spencer. We shall see, 
I hope, that, as Spencer put it, life is not for work, 
but work is for life ; whilst life itself is for happi- 
ness — the higher the better, but, whether high or 
low, happiness. To worry about " getting on," or 
to multiply domestic worry in the effort to appear 
successful in getting on, is to lose the object of 
work and of life. I repeat, then, that part of our 
cure for worry will consist in recognising that 
the means of happiness are not worth purchasing 
at the cost of happiness. 



XI 

A CASE OF WORRY 

No generality, as such, can ever breed convic- 
tion: that result is always reserved for the con- 
crete, individual, observed, realisable instance. 
The statement of Newton's law of gravitation 
sounds probable enough to us : but it would mean 
very little to any one who had not, for himself, 
observed that unsupported objects fall to the earth. 

It is so with generalities about worry. One 
might discourse at length concerning the effects of 
the body upon the mind, and the mind upon the 
body ; upon worry and digestion, worry and sleep, 
and kindred subjects, without ever bringing home 
their reality to the fortunate and unobservant 
reader — if such there were — who had never 
experienced or observed the ways of worry for him- 
self. I propose, therefore, to recount a case of 
worry, observed by myself, with what Mr. Gilbert 
makes Pooh-Bah call " a wealth of corroborative 
detail, calculated to give an air of artistic verisim- 
ilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing 
narrative." 1 

A young lady, enjoying excellent health, ex- 
pressed alike in good spirits, sound sleep, and un- 

1 I do not vouch for this quotation to a syllable. 



A CASE OF WORRY 127 

obtrusive digestion, became engaged to be married. 
The period of engagement lasted for little over a 
year, but during it there arose a grave cause of 
worry, supplemented by the uncertainty of her 
fiance's prospects, resulting in the otherwise un- 
desirable protraction of an engagement which, 
unlike most engagements, had no need to be tried 
by the test of time. During this period there was 
no change in physical habits; the same occupa- 
tions were followed, the same diet taken, the 
same hours of sleep observed as had been cus- 
tomary. There was no physical cause of ill-health : 
but an overwhelming mental cause. In accordance 
with the general truths elsewhere stated in this 
book, the purely psychical cause, an altered emo- 
tional tone, produced marked results, both psychi- 
cal and physical, illustrating the effects of the mind 
upon the body. The customary good spirits were, 
of course, replaced by low spirits, with frequent 
periods of marked depression which, at first, had 
none but the psychical cause — worry. This cause 
alone, unaided by any physical cause, or by any 
intellectual, as distinguished from an emotional, 
cause, sufficed utterly to destroy the power to sleep 
of the patient — as she had now become. In the 
first place, the sleep became shallower, as was 
proved by the occurrence of dreams, ultimately tak- 
ing the character of nightmare. The facts illus- 
trated the general proposition that determination 
of the quality of sleep may be accurately made by 
observation of the dreams experienced. " If a 



128 WORRY 

dream was a connected series of events, and was 
recollected as such after waking, it was clear that 
the mental rest was impaired. The more coherent 
and the more realistic the dream, and the more 
directly it was concerned with events in the recent 
past, the less restful was the sleep in which it 
occurred. The quantity as well as the quality of 
the sleep was all-important." * 

Later the patient found it almost impossible to 
sleep at all ; and this condition became worse until 
the engagement terminated in marriage. All the 
psychical causes of insomnia were then immediately 
arrested, as we shall see; but the insomnia per- 
sisted in consequence of the physical changes which 
must now be described, and which were entirely 
due to those same psychical causes. 

Another striking consequence of worry, in this 
case as in so many others, was an entirely new sus- 
ceptibility to fatigue. Before her engagement this 
young lady was a very good walker and worker; 
but her worry led to the most noteworthy altera- 
tion in these respects. Lack of sound sleep was a 
partial explanation, no doubt; but very constantly 
it was observed that, at different times of the same 
day, fatigue was experienced, both of mind and of 
body, so soon as she began to worry, and vanished 
if her mind was diverted from its cares by any 
engrossing occupation or interest. Very much 
more might be said as to the effects of worry upon 

1 Professor Gotch, of Oxford, at the British Association, York, 
1906. 



A CASE OF WORRY 129 

working power, whether of brain or of the muscles ; 
but this must suffice for the nonce. 

Most striking of all — it cannot be called re- 
markable, for it is a commonplace — was the effect 
of worry upon the digestion, which had never 
before shown any sign of defect or difficulty. The 
oncoming of the dyspepsia due to worry was almost 
dramatic, for it showed itself in a sudden access 
of pain — never before experienced — so disabling 
as entirely to arrest the patient when walking. 
From that very date until the present time — more 
than four years later — the patient has never been 
entirely free from symptoms of dyspepsia for a 
single day, and scarcely for a single night. The 
ordinary causes of digestive pain were all excluded ; 
there was no change or indiscretion of diet; it is 
certain that worry alone was its cause. The pain 
only recurred on a few occasions, and the dys- 
pepsia very soon assumed the definite nervous 
type, dependent upon weakness of the nerves of 
digestion, or rather, of the cells in the central ner- 
vous system, from which those nerves spring. 

Other physical consequences of this purely 
psychical cause are equally characteristic. For 
instance, the patient lost weight very markedly 
indeed. This, it is true, may be put down to the 
dyspepsia; but the same cannot be said of the 
extraordinary loss of hair that marked the most 
severe part of her illness. 

This loss of hair may well be noted carefully, 
for it followed the custom of nervous baldness. 



130 WORRY 

In this and in other cases known to the present 
writer — and any one may have observed them — 
the nutrition of the whole scalp was almost equally 
interfered with. Worry will very frequently affect 
the hair, either by causing it to fall out, or by 
causing it to turn grey. There is some basis, at 
any rate, for the familiar phrase, exaggerated 
though it be — " his hair turned white in a single 
night." 

Now the commoner causes of failure of nutri- 
tion in the case of the hair are local and circum- 
scribed. More usually the hair turns grey, not 
over the whole head equally, but at the temples — 
which derive their name from tempus, time, in allu- 
sion to this fact. Again, in the case of ordinary 
senile baldness, the hair is lost altogether at cer- 
tain parts whilst it persists elsewhere, as every one 
knows. Similarly, in the cases of premature bald- 
ness, so exceedingly common nowadays amongst 
quite young men, the loss of hair begins in certain 
parts — at the crown, or at the sides of the brow, 
or both — and spreads therefrom as the local cause 
extends. 

But when the hair falls out or turns grey from 
worry, the failure is usually general. I can recall, 
for instance, the case of a young man in whom 
worry caused the hair of the whole head to turn 
grey; and in the case which we are discussing the 
hair simply became thin; it was so thin that its 
bulk was reduced by quite two-thirds, but there was 
no bald patch. Again, in another case, I have seen 



A CASE OF WORRY 131 

a young man's hair become exceedingly thin, and 
almost uniformly so, as a marked and immediate 
consequence of the loss of his patrimony. 

Further we may note that, as in the case of the 
patient whose history I am describing, the loss of 
hair is not necessarily permanent. There has been 
no destruction of the hair-bulbs, as commonly oc- 
curs in cases where the scalp has been neglected; 
merely there has not been sufficient nervous energy 
available for the growth and support of the hairs. 
The consequence is their atrophy, due to lack of 
that trophic energy, as it is called, in virtue of 
which the nerves enable every part of the body, in 
health, to do its work. Failure of trophic energy 
is a highly characteristic consequence of worry 
in many parts of the body of more consequence 
than the scalp. 

But when the nervous system begins to recover 
its tone, and enough trophic energy is available, the 
lost hair may be abundantly replaced; and this 
was so in the particular case I am describing. 

Many other physical consequences of worry, 
more or less short of positive disease, were ob- 
served in this case ; but those I have named may be 
taken as indicating their character, and I will not 
pause to enumerate them. 

The patient was married and abruptly lost all 
her former cause for worry. It might be thought 
that her case would have ended in a steady re- 
covery. But that is not the way of worry. Hith- 
erto the case has merely illustrated the effects of 



132 WORRY 

the worried mind upon the body; but now we 
have to take account of the missing half of a 
vicious circle — the effects of the body upon the 
mind. 

I have said that the patient abruptly lost, on her 
wedding-day, all her former causes for worry, and 
that is true. Nor did these causes, nor any other 
external causes, return. But we must not assume 
that therefore she never worried again, even though 
we admit, as we must, that worry, like every other 
fact in the Universe, invariably has a cause. The 
victim of the effects of the mind upon the body 
now had to reckon with the effects of the body, 
thus injuriously modified, upon the mind. The 
external causes of worry had disappeared, but there 
remained internal causes of worry — causes which 
were themselves consequences of the former worry. 
Every fact in the Universe is both a consequence 
of prior causes and a cause of further consequences. 

In the case in question, not merely had all the 
old causes of worry vanished, but the patient fully 
and joyously recognised the fact. She did not 
worry about her former worries, as some people 
do — the most futile and pathetic, surely, of all 
conceivable occupations. She fully recognised that 
she had " nothing to worry about," and rejoiced 
thereat. Just as, in the first place, she had no 
physical causes for worry, so now she had no 
psychical causes. But this is of little avail to the 
dyspeptic. So far as everything without her was 
concerned, she should have been an optimist; and 



A CASE OF WORRY 133 

so she was, when nothing within her prevented. 
She regained, at such times, her characteristic high 
spirits, her energy and enthusiasms. 

But she had to reckon with the dyspepsia which 
her former worry had caused. Now the case of 
dyspepsia is profoundly different from the case 
of baldness. In the latter there is no vicious circle ; 
unless one is so foolish as to worry about one's 
hair, even though all else be well. Nor does ner- 
vous loss of hair lead to organic injury of the 
scalp. 

But any nervous dyspepsia, persisting long 
enough, must necessarily lead to an organic dyspep- 
sia — one that no longer depends entirely upon the 
nervous system for its causation. The food that 
is not digested, owing to purely nervous causes, 
necessarily acts as an irritant to the wall of the 
stomach. Now persistent irritation of any living 
membrane must lead to positive organic injury, 
quite distinct from mere failure of function due to 
lack of nervous energy. Hence, in this case as in 
countless others, a persistent nervous dyspepsia led 
to organic dyspepsia ; and when the nervous causes 
disappeared the organic causes remained. The 
gastric membrane was no longer normal, and seri- 
ous consequences ensued. Elsewhere I have dis- 
cussed at some length the difference between 
organic and functional disease. Here we see how 
they may interact with one another. There was 
produced in this instance a case of organic dys- 
pepsia with undoubted changes of a morbid kind 



134 WORRY 

in the lining of the stomach — and yet its sole 
efficient cause was a state of mind. This is far from 
being the only instance in which a purely psy- 
chical cause, by leading to nervous disorder, may 
result in morbid states of other than nervous tis- 
sues. In other words, we have to recognise that, 
whilst the distinction between functional and or- 
ganic disease is undoubtedly fundamental and 
valid, yet purely functional disease may cause or- 
ganic disease; and this may persist even when its 
original cause has been removed. A more general 
recognition of the possibility of this sequence would 
lead us to estimate cases of persistent hysteria, for 
instance, at their due importance. It does not do 
to say of any disorder, " Oh ! it is only functional," 
or " Oh ! it is only psychical." We should realise 
that the persistence of such conditions is incom- 
patible with the continuance of merely physical 
health. Here we have a case in point. 

And now we must observe the manner in which 
the digestion, thus disordered, acted upon the psy- 
chical well-being of the patient whom we are con- 
sidering. She had now within her a cause, only 
too efficient, of mental ill-health. It is the humili- 
ating truth that scarcely in the most rational and 
philosophic of human beings can the mental equi- 
librium be maintained if the digestive equilibrium 
fails. It is a pitiable business that the mind should 
be thus at the mercy of the stomach, but it is so. 
In this patient, all reasonable causes for worry 
had been removed; but unreasonable causes had 



A CASE OF WORRY 135 

been induced, and they were effective. The state 
of the digestion varied, of course, with a hundred 
circumstances; and the state of the mind varied 
with it. Just as, formerly, the variations in the 
state of mind produced variations in the state of 
the body, so now, variations in the state of the body 
produced variations in the state of the mind. When 
the digestion was at its best, organic optimism was 
possible, and since there was also every reason for 
rational optimism, the patient was happy at such 
times. But when the digestion was unsatisfactory, 
and the organic sense of well-being was therefore 
destroyed, the patient began to worry, even though 
no rational cause for anything but optimism 
existed. 

Be it remembered that worry due to internal 
causes always finds some external pretext to war- 
rant it ; there may be, as in this case, no adequate 
pretext, but something can always be found. The 
case is precisely the same with irritability or bad 
temper of internal origin. The man who worries 
because his indigestion has interfered with his or- 
ganic sense of well-being never acknowledges 
explicitly that he is worrying because he is out of 
sorts; he must always provide himself with some 
external circumstance to serve as a pretext for 
worry. The man who is made irritable by gout 
never simply " is irritable " ; he always vents his 
irritation on something. A noisy child, a delayed 
meal, the colour of his wife's dress, any the most 
trivial and inconsequent thing will serve ; but there 



136 WORRY 

must be something. The fact that it does not mat- 
ter what, and that something can always be found, 
is all-significant. This morning the ostensible 
cause may be the incivility of a servant ; this after- 
noon he explains his irritation on the ground that 
he cannot stand an obsequious servant; at one 
moment he will say, " I wish the devil you would n't 
contradict me," and at the next, " I wish the devil 
you would n't always agree with me ; have n't you 
a mind of your own ? " In short whatever his 
fellows do is wrong; which would be absurd did 
we not realise that the unchanging cause of the 
irritation is within him, and is independent of what 
is without. 

Similarly with the worry that is caused by in- 
digestion. It must always have an external pretext 
for its existence, but it does not matter a straw 
what that pretext may be. When this patient's 
digestion went wrong, she would worry about 
whatever happened or whatever did not happen. 
She very soon realised perfectly the state of 
affairs ; just as the angry man who savagely kicks 
a stone realises that on no ordinary occasion would 
he have suspected it of lying there on purpose to 
trip him up. This patient was perfectly well aware 
that the objects of her worry were quite unworthy 
of a moment's least concern — but her recognition 
of this counted for nothing at all. Such recogni- 
tion is an act of the reason; but we are not con- 
trolled by the reason, and nothing in the world is 
less relevant to the emotional state of our minds. 



A CASE OF WORRY 137 

Your reason tells you that the non-arrival of an 
expected letter is not worth worrying about ; that, 
indeed, your correspondent could not be expected 
to reply so soon ; or it may even tell you that you 
would not have worried about the matter for a 
moment had it been yesterday when you were well, 
and not to-day when you are out of sorts; you 
admit the propriety of your reason's observations 
and then you simply ignore them. Thus this pa- 
tient would allow the merest trifles to prey upon 
her mind when her digestion was out of order, 
though she fully realised that this and this alone 
was the cause of her anxiety. 

Here we see illustrated, in the fullest degree, 
that action and reaction between mind and body, 
which most perfectly demonstrates the meaning 
of the phrase, a vicious circle. In this case, which 
followed an absolutely typical course, a purely 
mental disturbance caused a physical disorder, and 
this produced a mental disturbance similar to the 
original one, but utterly different in causation. 
The problem now was to break the circle by at- 
tacking the physical disorder ; and the difficulty of 
doing so depended upon the fact that it was a 
vicious circle which had to be dealt with. For 
all the physical means — such as regulation of the 
diet, drugs, massage, and so forth — appropriate 
to the physical disorder, had to contest the ground, 
inch by inch, with the opposing influence of the 
worry which that disorder had engendered, and 
which in turn tended to perpetuate it. In the case 



138 WORRY 

which I am describing, patience and prudence and 
practical philosophy ultimately won the day, and 
the patient was restored, after years of suffering, 
psychical and physical, to something like her former 
health; but my pen must fail to express the dis- 
tressing cost of the patient's experience. After 
all, though youth is resilient and hard to beat, and 
though such a long lane may at last reveal a turn- 
ing, nothing can compensate for the years that 
might have been — should have been — wholly 
happy, and were not. There was so much lost, 
and it is lost for ever. 



XII 
WORRY IN CHILDHOOD 

For convenience we have been studying our 
subject as if the worrier were always an adult 
man; but now it is time for us to remember the 
special cases of women and children. These are 
worthy of separate study, since they show special 
characters, have a special significance, and require 
specially adapted treatment. 

I propose first of all to deal with the worrying 
child, since this subject precedes the other in logical 
order. 

The reader is doubtless acquainted with the cele- 
brated doctrine that the history of the developing 
individual is, in general, a modified recapitulation 
of the history of the race to which it belongs; 
each individual " climbs its own ancestral tree." 
This doctrine applies to our present case. Self- 
consciousness, the power of " looking before and 
after," is a very late and recent acquirement of 
our species; and, like other such, it develops only 
at a relatively late stage in the history of each one 
of us. It is evidently impossible to conceive of a 
worrying baby. The idea of a baby excludes the 
possibility of worry. Very slowly there emerges 
the power of self-consciousness in virtue of which 



140 WORRY 

the child is — or becomes — human. At first the 
baby begins to recognise its hands and features as 
its own, and later it identifies its feet as part of 
itself. Then it completely identifies itself as an 
individual, comparable to its father or mother; 
but it does not at once make the crowning identi- 
fication of that individual with itself. At first it 
says, " Baby loves you " ; some time must pass 
before it can make the first assertion of the supreme 
dignity of our kind by saying, " / love you." 

When self-consciousness is acquired, worry be- 
comes possible. But we find, as might be expected, 
that the child does not exercise this faculty of pro- 
jecting the self into the past or the future in 
anything like the degree that is common to its 
elders. Indeed it is fair to say that a child has no 
business to worry at any time. Its sleep and di- 
gestion should be perfect ; it has no worldly cares, 
has no interest in a Stock and Share List, need 
take no thought for the morrow. There is such a 
thing, unquestionably, as normal worry in the case 
of adult men and women ; but there is no such thing 
as normal worry in the case of a child. 

Nevertheless, children do worry, and in so doing 
afford a spectacle alike pitiable and unnatural. 
Whatever may be expected at other ages, childhood 
should be " sunny " ; and a worrying child must 
be a source of distress to every one who has a heart 
for children. 

It is easy, I fancy, to recognise the two principal 
causes of worry in childhood — and it is good to 



WORRY IN CHILDHOOD 141 

recognise that, since there is no natural reason for 
worry in children, its causes, factitious and man- 
made, are easily removable. 

I have said that children but rarely exercise the 
faculty of self-consciousness. A child should 
scarcely look before and after; it should live in 
the present. But the two meanings of the word 
self-conscious may lead to confusion here. Every 
one knows that children may be extremely self- 
conscious in the popular sense of the word — may, 
for instance, be exceedingly shy with strangers. 
Self-consciousness in this popular sense is often, 
I believe, due to the unwisdom of parents. I fancy 
that parental wisdom may not inaccurately be 
gauged by the simple, un-self-conscious ease with 
which an unsophisticated child will approach a 
stranger, or even enter a crowded drawing-room. 

But the fact remains that children, whether by 
nature or imitation or suggestion or what not, are 
very liable to an artificial exaggeration of the 
faculty of self-consciousness — and this in two dis- 
tinct directions. 

The first, and by far the least important, is con- 
cerned with the child's fear of ridicule. As every 
one knows, this is very characteristic of childhood. 
The small boy who fears to be ridiculous at a new 
school, because he cannot catch a ball, or has an 
unusual name or appearance, may suffer agonies 
of worry — none the less painful because in his 
elders' eyes the occasion seems unworthy of them. 
This applies more especially, no doubt, to sensitive, 



142 WORRY 

highly-evolved children — but such children are, 
of course, the most precious members of their kind. 
One cannot appeal to big boys, that they should 
cease from teasing little ones, but one can certainly 
appeal to parents, that they should do what in 
them lies to spare their children the misery, highly 
injurious to their physical, mental, and moral de- 
velopment, that accrues from excessive exposure 
to ridicule. In the case of sensitive children, very 
little exposure indeed may prove to be excessive. 

I have not specially referred to girls, but what 
I have said certainly applies to them. I fear that 
big girls are no more merciful to little ones than 
are big boys to little boys; and an eccentric cos- 
tume, provided by a thoughtless parent, — who 
takes precious good care not to wear last season's 
sleeves herself, — may embitter the life of a girl 
for weeks. I have blamed big boys and girls for 
their deliberate cruelty in these matters; but it 
may also be remembered that similar cruelty is 
wrought, though unwittingly, by the careless re- 
marks of adults, who forget the sensitiveness of 
children to ridicule, the keenness of their hearing, 
and the retentiveness of their memories. 

And now let us turn to a far more serious and 
important cause of worry in children. This is 
religious worry, to which I elsewhere devote a 
special chapter. But here I must refer especially 
to the subject of religious worry in childhood, 
since it constitutes the most distressing and in- 
jurious kind of worry at this time of life. 



WORRY IN CHILDHOOD 143 

Religion is most emphatically for a self-conscious 
creature. A dog has no need of a religion. Man, 
" with such large discourse, looking before and 
after," cannot do without some sort of religion — 
unless he be merely anthropoid rather than truly 
human. It follows that the child, scarcely self- 
conscious in the true sense, but living in and for 
the present, — as a child should, if it is to become 
a healthy and worthy adult — is essentially an irre- 
ligious, or rather, a non-religious creature. The 
religious period will assuredly come in any case. 
As surely as puberty and adolescence arrive, with 
their intense discovery and contemplation of the 
self, so surely will the religious consciousness de- 
velop. There exists not the smallest occasion for 
the endeavour to anticipate this period. The re- 
ligious parent need not be concerned who discov- 
ers that his child is just a little pagan. The normal 
healthy child is such a little pagan, and should be. 
Nevertheless, when the critical period arrives — 
and it does well to arrive late — the religious con- 
sciousness will infallibly develop itself, though no 
sign of it seemed to exist before. 

Now, in the first place, let us make the prelimi- 
nary note that all psychologists — and every parent 
should be a psychologist in his or her measure — 
are agreed as to the desirability of postponing the 
period of puberty — or, at any rate, scrupulously 
avoiding anything that will tend to hasten its com- 
ing. The sexual and the religious life are so con- 
nected — at any rate during the developmental 



144 WORRY 

period — that premature religiosity is apt to lead 
to premature puberty, and thus to interference with 
the normal course of development. This important 
subject is no immediate concern of mine in the 
present volume, and therefore I can spend no fur- 
ther time upon it. I can merely take the op- 
portunity to remind the thoughtful parent of the 
indisputable facts which I state, and to recommend 
them to his consideration. If he be really a 
thoughtful parent he will thank me for recom- 
mending to him in this connection the study of 
Prof. Stanley Hall's book on " Adolescence," and 
Prof. William James's equally valuable book on 
" The Varieties of Religious Experience." 

And now as to the far more important matter 
of the causation of religious worry in children. In 
his great work on the Philosophy of Religion, 
Prof. Harald Hoffding, of the University of 
Copenhagen, describes religion as having been, in 
the past, like a pillar of fire, moving in advance of 
humanity, and urging it onwards; but as being, 
in our own time, like an ambulance that travels in 
the rear of humanity, and picks up and tends those 
who have fallen by the way. For the child religion 
has neither of these functions. Let us essay, as 
best we may, the all but impossible task of under- 
standing what religion means and is worth to a 
child. 

Religion has two contrasted aspects: one of 
consolation, guidance, help, encouragement in the 
battle of life; and another that is sinister, mina- 



WORRY IN CHILDHOOD 145 

tory, terrible. The latter aspect of religion is daily 
falling into discredit in our day; though for ages 
past it has been the dominant aspect of religion, 
and is or was the only aspect worth mentioning in 
the case of primitive religions. 

Now for the consolatory, peace-bringing, worry- 
destroying aspect of religion a child has very little 
use. The existence of the normal child is already 
happy, free from worry and care, and without 
dark anticipations. Thus this aspect of religion 
has little influence upon a child. The time has 
not yet come when its value can be appreciated. 
Come it surely will — but it has not come yet. 

And — whether or not because this aspect of 
religion is seen to influence a child but little — this 
is the aspect which is commonly subordinated in 
the presentation of religion to a child. In general, 
religion does not appear to a child as a consoler, 
a source of joy and the peace which passeth all 
understanding. Let him who passed his childhood 
in Scotland, or in a Puritan, Evangelical, or Cal- 
vinistic home, testify to the truth of this assertion. 
Was religion to him a source of joy or of fear? 

The truth is that we tend to preserve for the 
: ' benefit " of our children a conception of religion 
which we have ourselves outgrown. The religion 
which adult men and women need is not one that 
adds new fear, worries, or terrors to life. Such a 
religion has no survival-value for the adult; it 
does not serve his life, and therefore it cannot sur- 
vive. In these days of headlong, fearful, hard- 

10 



146 WORRY 

working life, when humanity is multiplying so 
rapidly on an earth that is meanwhile ever shrink- 
ing, this aspect or conception of religion is quickly 
losing the survival-value which it once had as a 
moral agent — and it must shortly go. It makes 
no appeal to us; it is a moralising agent only in 
the case of those whose psychical development is 
relatively small. 

But we keep it for our children. Or even if we 
represent religion to them in both of its aspects, the 
minatory aspect is that which naturally appeals to 
them. For the other a sunny, careless child has little 
use ; but this makes an appeal to its imagination and 
to its capacity for terror. The " devil," who is to us 
merely a convenient name wherewith to express 
irritation or surprise, is to a child a terrible reality. 

Prof. Alexander Bain of Aberdeen, the great 
psychologist, records in his Autobiography his 
childish conception of the Deity. He seemed to 
see in the heavens a replica of a sort of desk, upon 
which lay a large open book — probably a ledger 
in the original — such as he had seen on earth. 
At this desk sat the Deity, pen in hand, His all- 
seeing eye fixed upon hapless little Alec, His right 
hand ready to record, in indelible characters await- 
ing the Day of Judgment, the least wrongful act 
or thought that might emerge from the heart of a 
boy. Than this picture, no more appalling and 
horrible indictment could be conceived, of the la- 
mentable system of religious education to which 
poor young Bain had been subjected. 



WORRY IN CHILDHOOD 147 

Again, many a reader must remember almanacs 
and the like, at the top of which was depicted a 
large and awful eye, to suggest the principal exer- 
cise of the Almighty Eavesdropper. And I, for 
one, retain a vivid recollection of one night when, 
at the age of seven or eight, I started up in bed, 
covered with great drops of perspiration — I re- 
member the dripping of them — because I believed 
that I had committed the unpardonable sin of 
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Many are the 
sensitive children who have been haunted by that 
awful phrase, " the unpardonable sin." 

Yet again, I recall my childish horror of such 
phrases as " the second death," and " the worm 
that dieth not " ; and I shall never forget my first 
conception of hell. It was a circular hell, dark 
but yet luridly luminous, with sky-high, smooth, 
and absolutely precipitous walls; there was no 
climbing them. And eternity was passed in an 
endless passage along this closed circle. The reader 
may laugh; but how many are the children whose 
young imaginations have been forced to such con- 
ceptions by the carelessness of parents, or the un- 
intentional brutality of their " spiritual advisers." 
Undoubtedly the time has passed for ever when 
the Scottish child dreaded the approach of Sunday 
not merely because of its dulness — unrelieved by 
the teaching that Heaven would be a perpetual 
Sunday — but because of the utter horror which 
the good old-fashioned Scottish sermon was cal- 
culated, designed, intended to inspire in the hearts 



148 WORRY 

of young and old alike. Yet children will form 
their own conceptions on these matters, and the 
parent, who is at a loss to imagine what ails a 
child who should be happy, will do well to inquire 
whether the explanation is not to be found in 
religious worry. 

In many cases — though it was certainly not so 
in mine — it is only too easy to recognise why the 
worry-causing conception of religion is so prom- 
inent in the minds of children. In all ages human 
beings have had the choice of two means by which 
to govern one another — fear and love. Each is 
effective in certain cases. The latter has the dis- 
advantage that it requires love and patience on the 
part of him who would govern. As every one of 
us must happily know — whether from personal 
experience or by observation — love may be ab- 
solutely, gloriously, triumphantly successful for 
this purpose. Charles Darwin, to quote a classic 
instance, records that, in the upbringing of his 
children — now famous men of science — he used 
love alone. The only reward was the father's 
smile; the only punishment was the withholding 
of it. No rod or birch, no boxes of chocolates, 
could have succeeded better ; or a millionth part 
as well. But in order to rule by love one must 
love — even with something of the love that en- 
dureth all things and never faileth. And, again, 
the capacity for love must be present in those 
whom you would govern. The method is inapplic- 
able in the case of a wild beast ; it is even inapplic- 



WORRY IN CHILDHOOD 149 

able in only too many human beings — though 
there is probably always the might-have-been in 
such cases. 

Take, then, the case of the ordinary parent, who 
is a parent merely because certain physiological 
consequences tend to follow certain physiological 
causes ; or take the case of the hireling nurse. The 
utter patience of love is not available in such cases ; 
or the would-be governor may be such — a drunken 
father, for instance — as cannot rule by love be- 
cause it is inconceivable that he should evoke the 
love of any child towards him, even were he cap- 
able of feeling love towards the child. Such a 
nurse or parent must plainly use the method of 
rule by fear, since rule he must, and rule by love 
is impossible. 

And religion is prostituted to this end. Corritptio 
optimi pessima — the corruption of the best is the 
worst corruption — and the proverb is true in this 
case. The All-seeing eye intent upon the pecca- 
dilloes of childhood, the recording angel, — whose 
record of good deeds is perfunctory but who never 
misses a bad one, — the fear of hell, the conscious- 
ness of " sin " — all these furnish effective weapons 
in the rule of childhood by fear. 

And so the children worry. Before now children 
have been driven to suicide by religious worry — 
by this abominable prostitution of the power which 
should make earth Heaven. The little boy who 
steals a chocolate-cream from a forbidden box, or 
the little girl who forgets to say her prayers or 



150 WORRY 

shams a headache at church-time, — in such, if 
they be sensitive children, either ruled by fear 
using religion as one of its weapons, or else curi- 
ous and eager, reading the Bible independently, 
and mercilessly applying certain of its passages to 
themselves, there may be engendered a degree of 
religious worry that may blight the young life or 
distort it for all future years. To those who, 
thoughtlessly or selfishly or even with the highest 
and most deliberate intention, are responsible for 
such cruelty we may most solemnly quote the 
words of One who loved little children : " But 
whoso shall offend one of these little ones which 
believe in me, it were better for him that a mill- 
stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were 
drowned in the depth of the sea." 

Some may answer that this is all very well, but 
that children must be taught to be conscientious; 
and to be conscientious is to be susceptible to worry 
over misdeeds. Certainly I am the last person in 
the world to suggest that its moral education is not 
a vital matter in the case of every child. But the 
government of a child by fear is brutal and danger- 
ous, no matter whether the fear be concerned with 
this life or the next; there is no valid distinction. 
Parents are apt to forget the vividness of the child's 
imagination and the terrible character of its crea- 
tions under the influence of what is called religious 
teaching. Thus many a parent who would shudder 
at the notion of brutally treating his child's body 
by way of correction, will not hesitate brutally to 



WORRY IN CHILDHOOD 151 

maltreat its mind; which, in the case of many 
children, may be a far graver cruelty than the 
other; its soul being more sensitive than its skin. 

Furthermore, there is the future to think of. If 
the child be governed by love — whether directed 
to its parents or to such Deity as a child is capable 
of conceiving, or to both — the psychical changes 
and the intellectual development of later years 
offer no menace to its moral consciousness. But 
if the more facile method of government by re- 
ligious fear be employed, there is to-morrow to 
reckon with. The child's hell and Satan may be 
real enough to effect that obedience which — for 
your own convenience — you regard as the chief 
virtue of childhood; and it is very improbable 
that you have sufficient imagination (if you have 
used this method) to enable you to realise the 
agonies of religious worry from which your child 
has suffered — especially in the dark. But the 
child will as surely outgrow this crudely material- 
istic creed as the race has outgrown it. The time 
will come when your child will worry about Satan 
no more than you do — and when its idea of Hell 
will become at any rate as vague and insubstan- 
tial, if not inoperative, as your own. Except in 
comparatively few cases, the child will not be gov- 
erned by supernatural fears for ever; and the 
question arises whether, when he puts away the 
old notions with other childish things, he may not 
find himself without any moral anchorage. If this 
be so, at whose door will his sins lie? 



152 WORRY 

Sometimes the future may have another fate in 
store. Some physical illness at adolescence, or the 
presence of some inherent mental flaw, may lead to 
derangement of the mind — temporary or per- 
manent. Then the religious worry that was de- 
veloped and fostered in childhood will reassert 
itself in a degree, the horror of which even the 
unimaginative parent will be able to realise. Your 
innocent daughter may have to be fed, for weeks 
at a time, by a tube passed through her nose, be- 
cause the seed sown years before has fructified in 
the belief that she has committed the unpardonable 
sin, is for ever a castaway, and is therefore un- 
worthy to eat. These cases of religious melan- 
cholia in young people are quite common. I am 
not prepared to say that their efficient cause is to 
be found in the religious worry of earlier years; 
but it is quite certain, first, that such religious worry 
predisposes to the melancholia of which the ex- 
citing cause is perhaps merely influenza; and, 
second, that the early teaching entirely determines 
the peculiarly horrible and distressing form which 
the melancholia assumes; and if melancholia of 
any kind be grievous enough, religious melancholia 
is grievous in the very last degree. Consider how 
different the course, intensity, and duration of the 
illness might have been, if " religion," instead of 
aggravating it, had been the true religion which 
might well have proved either a complete preven- 
tive, or at any rate the most potent means of cure. 



XIII 

DOMESTIC WORRY 

The responsible head of a household is apt too 
lightly to assume that he alone has any occasion or 
excuse for worry. It is a revelation to the young 
married man to discover that part of his wife's 
pleasure in a holiday lies in the fact that not only 
does she not know what is coming for dinner but 
she has had no concern in ordering it. I observe 
also that, though one thinks it absurd for one's 
wife to worry about a mere dinner, one expects 
unlimited variety thereat and is apt to grumble if 
expectation be disappointed. 

I have called this chapter Domestic Worry, and 
not Worry and Woman, because the only kind of 
worry that is characteristic of woman as distin- 
guished from man is domestic worry. A woman 
has most or all of a man's causes for worry, but 
these do not need special consideration with refer- 
ence to her; she has, in addition, a kind of worry 
which he has not. Indeed, it may be said that 
women worry about the affairs of the home in 
order that men may not. It is supposed — and men 
lend their able support to this convenient notion — 
that a man's cares are so many and contrived on 
so heroic a scale that at least he must be spared 



154 WORRY 

any worry at home ; the petty details of domesticity 
must show only their smooth side to him. 

And since the good wife sees to it that her mate 
is never bothered with domestic affairs, he is only 
too apt to think that such affairs involve no worry 
— and he is gravely in error. 

The average healthy business man should be 
able, as we observe elsewhere, to leave his busi- 
ness behind him when he comes home. His return 
to his own hearth should mean the beginning of 
that holiday-period or time of freedom from worry, 
which I believe to be a necessary part of every 
well-spent day. His wife is undoubtedly right in 
wishing to ensure him the enjoyment of this 
period; but it by no means follows that her own 
case is always an easy one. 

It is notorious that " a woman's work is never 
done," and this is true even of the lady who does 
no work in the ordinary sense of that word. Such 
a lady may provide many sources of worry for 
herself, in the course of entertaining, or trying to 
outshine her neighbours and friends, or trying to 
make a braver show in the world than her hus- 
band's income warrants. My concern here, how- 
ever, is not with such worries, but with the worries 
which are inevitable in the life of the most sensible 
woman — the domestic worry which is insepar- 
able from domesticity. When Emerson declared, 
in his " English Traits," that their domesticity was 
the tap-root of all the powers exhibited by the 
English people, he spoke a profound truth, — true 



DOMESTIC WORRY 155 

not merely of England alone. Domestic Worry 
is therefore a subject worthy of the wisest pen and 
the wisest reader, and need not be disdained of us. 

Domestic worry both makes a woman older and 
makes her look older. I have no great liking for 
the woman whose best friend is her mirror, but I 
am not so foolish as to imagine that the details of 
a woman's appearance are unimportant — affecting 
as they do her own happiness, the happiness of her 
husband, and therefore the happiness of her chil- 
dren. Let us, therefore, first consider the effects of 
worry upon a woman's face. In so doing, I avail 
myself of what is incomparably the greatest book 
ever written upon the subject with which it deals 
— Charles Darwin's " Expression of the Emotions 
in Man and Animals." 

Certain facial characters are commonly seen 
in the various emotional states which Darwin 
enumerates as " Low Spirits, Anxiety, Grief, De- 
jection, Despair." Primarily, of course, these 
characters are merely temporary, disappearing 
with the emotion which they express. But the 
frequent repetition of any facial expression causes 
permanent alterations in the expression, and these 
correspond, with, and suggest to the beholder, the 
emotional state that has predominated ; so that the 
man who is always laughing comes to look " a 
jolly man," the thinker a thoughtful man, and the 
woman who worries begins to wear a worried look 
that persists. 

When a woman worries, the muscles of her face 



156 WORRY 

tend to lose the " tone " which is characteristic of 
healthy muscles, and thus " the lips, cheeks, and 
lower jaw all sink downwards from their own 
weight. Hence all the features are lengthened; 
and the face of a person who hears bad news is 
said to fall . . . the eyes become dull and lack 
expression. . . . The eyebrows not rarely are ren- 
dered oblique, which is due to their inner ends 
being raised. This produces peculiarly formed 
wrinkles on the forehead, which are very different 
from those of a simple frown; though in some 
cases a frown alone may be present. The corners 
of the mouth are drawn downwards, which is so 
universally recognised as a sign of being out of 
spirits, that it is almost proverbial." 1 

Darwin goes on to describe in detail the be- 
haviour of the muscles which cause these wrinkles 
and says that " they may be called, for the sake 
of brevity, the grief-muscles." Equally correct 
would it be to call them the worry-muscles. Fur- 
ther he says what is of special interest to us : " As 
far as I have been able to observe, the grief-muscles 
are brought into action much more frequently by 
children and women than by men. They are rarely 
acted on, at least with grown-up persons, from 
bodily pain, but almost exclusively from mental 
distress." Darwin also observes that this expres- 
sion is to be found in certain works of art, such as 
the famous statue of the Laocoon and Fra Angel- 

1 Darwin, "Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," 
popular edition, pp. 181, 182. 



DOMESTIC WORRY 157 

ico's " Descent from the Cross," in Florence. Sir 
James Crichton-Browne informed Darwin that 
these muscles " may constantly be seen in energetic 
action in cases of melancholia, and especially of 
hypochondria; and that the persistent 1 lines or 
furrows, due to their habitual contraction, are char- 
acteristic of the physiognomy of the insane be- 
longing to these two classes." 

To say that a person is " down in the mouth " is 
synonymous with saying that he is out of spirits; 
and the permanent depression of the corners of the 
mouth is characteristic of the woman who worries. 
This is very characteristic, also, of the melancholic 
insane, as many observers have noted. Darwin 
observes : " It is remarkable how small a depres- 
sion of the corners of the mouth gives to the 
countenance an expression of low spirits or de- 
jection, so that an extremely slight contraction of 
these muscles would be sufficient to betray this 
state of mind." 

It is time, perhaps, that some one should draw 
the attention of women to the psychical factor of 
good looks. Now, as ever, women are concerned 
about their appearance, and it ill becomes any man 
who knows a pretty face from a plain one, and 
knows which he prefers, to jeer at them for this. 
When Dr. Arthur Evans unearthed in Crete the 
palace of King Minos, dating from an age when 
Moses was still in the womb of time, he discovered 
that the Minoan women of that remote age used 

1 Italics mine. 



158 WORRY 

corsets and cosmetics just for all the world like the 
women of thirty-five centuries after them. But the 
observation of any man — whether of the women 
whose faces he himself admires, or of the women 
whom he finds to be admired — will teach him a 
lesson which is also taught by the contemporary 
accounts of most of the fascinating women of his- 
tory. It is not the form of her nose, nor the 
smoothness of her skin, nor the length of her eye- 
lashes, that endows a woman with the empire that 
she loves. Such beauty is only skin-deep. But 
there is another beauty — to which Herbert Spen- 
cer alluded when he said, " The saying that beauty 
is but skin-deep, is but a skin-deep saying." And 
the determining factor of the beauty which age 
cannot wither nor custom stale is the factor of 
mind. Here, as everywhere else, mind is the only 
important matter — appearances notwithstanding. 
There is no cosmetic yet known, nor will any such 
be revealed by the chemistry of the future, that 
can for a moment compare with a merry heart, a 
lucid mind, and a loving soul. And of all the 
ravages that can be worked in a fair face there are 
none against which your chemistry is more impo- 
tent — and your electricity and massage and chin- 
straps and depilatories and their like — than the 
ravages of worry. Let the reader look out, in the 
next crowd in which he finds himself, for a woman's 
face marked in mouth and brow as I have so 
minutely described with Darwin's aid, and he will 
recognise that one might as well attempt to cure 



DOMESTIC WORRY 159 

a cancer with sticking plaster as attempt to erase 
with any cosmetic these indelible lines. 

The beauty that is more than skin-deep, the 
beauty that lasts, and the beauty that counts in the 
long run, is a creation of the mind, and by the mind 
alone can it be destroyed. 

We all know these things ; we have all read that 
the dominant women of history had a beauty not 
merely cutaneous, but psychical. Yet women ha- 
bitually ignore what they know, or should know, so 
well. I will add no more words of my own to 
propositions which merely need statement to find 
immediate acceptance; but I would remind the 
reader of one of the most poignant and perfect 
poems ever written. Every one has read the five 
poems on Lucy, which Wordsworth wrote in Ger- 
many. In the longest and greatest of these, 
" Three years she grew in sun and shower," the 
poet pictures Nature as planning and describing 
the means by which she is to make a perfect 
woman. The child is to be a friend of the stars 
and the brooks, " And beauty born of murmuring 
sound shall pass into her face." Not in crowded, 
worried cities, but in communion with Nature, 
placid and benign, is the child to acquire that beauty 
of expression which will endear her to all that have 
seeing eyes, and, at the last, will look out even 

from her shroud. 

• •••••• 

That worry shortens life is, of course, a com- 
monplace ; and I have already said that worry not 



160 WORRY 

merely makes a woman look older but actually 
makes her older. The same is true of a man ; and 
so, also, is what I have said regarding the effects 
of worry upon the face, though in his case they are 
of smaller importance. Nor need I say anything 
specially here, regarding the effects of domestic 
worry upon a woman's health, since these effects 
are in no way peculiar to her sex. 

But it is necessary to consider with some care 
the varieties of domestic worry. Servants, chil- 
dren, and finance, I suppose, constitute the chief 
causes of offence. Regarding the last I will say 
nothing, since it is not peculiar to domestic worry, 
and has the same causes and most of the same 
consequences in a woman's case as in a man's. But 
servants and children are especially the woman's 
concern, and the time will be well occupied if we 
can say anything useful about them here. 

Now the general proposition which I would sub- 
mit is that, in both cases, the occasion for worry, 
when worry arises, is more frequently to be found 
in the woman herself than in the servants or the 
children whom she blames. Let us first consider 
the servants. 

The average mistress, having only an average 
imagination, is scarcely able to realise how dull 
and undesirable is the life of the average servant. 
It is doubtless better for the morals of the ordinary 
girl of the class from which domestic servants are 
drawn that she should become a housemaid or 
" general " than a factory-hand,, and it is probably 



DOMESTIC WORRY 161 

better for her body. But the life, as regulated by 
the ordinary mistress, is a poor one; and such a 
mistress is nowadays experiencing much difficulty 
in finding good servants or in keeping them when 
found. But it is a significant fact that, though 
similar means of selection be employed in different 
cases, one mistress will constantly have occasion to 
worry about her servants, whilst another comes 
across " treasures," and is able to retain them. 
Doctors know how high is the proportion of illness 
amongst domestic servants, how liable they are to 
bloodlessness and varicose veins, flat feet, con- 
sumption, and heart weakness. They fill the gen- 
eral hospitals, they furnish a large proportion of 
his patients to the doctor in poor practice, and from 
their scanty earnings they combine to swell the 
enormous incomes of the owners of patent medi- 
cines. Probably a majority of all mistresses at- 
tempt to exact from their female servants an 
amount of work of which the average female 
organism is incapable, meanwhile allowing an 
amount of time " out " that is quite inadequate 
for recuperation — the more so because, being 
scanty, and the working time being so dull, it is 
usually spent in places of amusement as abom- 
inably ventilated as nearly all our public resorts 
are. Thus the sympathy of the doctor is with the 
servant rather than the mistress, and he is inclined 
to think that the worry about servants from which 
the average mistress is rarely free is well earned 

and quite unworthy of his condolence. Regarding 

ii 



162 WORRY 

domestic worry about servants, then, I would say 
to the average mistress that, until she begins to 
treat her servants as she might reasonably expect 
to be treated were she a servant, her worry is 
thoroughly well deserved, and that the contempla- 
tion thereof is a source of gratification to me and 
to all who have had sufficient experience — espe- 
cially experience in medical practice — to enable 
them to realise how hard the lot of the average 
domestic servant is. 

Finally, let us consider domestic worry about 
children. The modern solution of this problem 
is similar to Mr. Wells's proposed solution for 
the servant-problem — do without them. This is 
abundantly proved by the steadily falling birth- 
rate of all civilised countries except Japan — and 
Russia, if that unhappy land falls within the cate- 
gory. People who do not know sometimes suggest 
that the fall in our birth-rate is due to a decline 
of national fertility or to other physiological 
causes; but people who do know are well aware 
that parentage is declining because it is unpopular, 
and that the one or two child marriage is very 
rarely an instance of acquired sterility, but is a 
phenomenon the origin of which is to be traced to 
the deliberate volition of men and women. 

What, then, is the judgment which must be 
passed upon the popular remedy or preventive for 
the kind of domestic worry that is caused by the 
care and upbringing of children? Many difficul- 
ties and uncertainties are to be encountered in the 



DOMESTIC WORRY 163 

study of this subject; but one thing at least is 
certain — that critics who express an unqualified 
approval, and those who express an unqualified 
disapproval, are both out of court. Such a judg- 
ment as that of the bachelor Bishop, with his in- 
come of ten thousand pounds a year, merely 
serves to add to the gaiety of nations, which is, 
of course, a service of sorts. 

If ever it is true that circumstances alter cases, 
it is true here. Let us consider certain familiar and 
well-defined sets of circumstances. 

In the first place, there are the circumstances of 
the housewife, already over-worked and burdened 
with the care of a " large family." Any further 
increase of her responsibilities may definitely urge 
her into the grave towards which she is already 
speeding far too fast. The doctrines of ecclesiasti- 
cism and its votaries, who quote the command, " Be 
fruitful and multiply," would here have the effect 
not merely of injuring or killing the mother, but 
of thereby injuring her husband, and the children 
whom she already possesses. After all, there are 
physical limits to what even a devoted mother can 
accomplish; and it is surely better to bring up 
four children by a mother's loving care than to 
leave ten motherless. 

In a word, it is my deliberate and responsible 
conviction that there is a vast deal of domestic 
worry, borne by women and occasioned by the size 
of their families, which should have been prevented 



164 WORRY 

by practical recognition of the facts which I have 
stated. The truth is that the doctrine, " Be fruitful 
and multiply/' as taught for many centuries past, 
is a fruit of that horrible thing which men now call 
militarism. The powers that be must have food 
for powder, and to this end the birth-rate must be 
kept as high as possible. But the era of militarism 
is coming to an end, even though Europe be still 
an armed camp ; and its doctrines will be replaced 
by others, saner, more humane, more solicitous of 
human life and its worth, more appreciative of 
quality and less appreciative of quantity. A wil- 
derness of bishops notwithstanding, I for one will 
dare to assert that much domestic worry, with all 
its disastrous results for mothers and children alike, 
will be prevented in years to come, to the lasting 
benefit of all concerned. 

But there is another answer to be returned in 
other circumstances, and the disastrous fact is that 
hitherto it is only the very few who have attempted 
to discriminate If we examine and compare the 
birth-rates of uif^rent classes, as, for instance, by 
contrasting the birth-rate of Kensington with that 
of Whitechapel, we find, in general, that the less 
the excuse or warrant for a low birth-rate, the 
lower the birth-rate is. Where the circumstances 
are such that we know women to be suffering from 
domestic worry that shortens their lives, and thus 
injures the rising generation — for whom the 
influence of the mother transcends all other influ- 
ences — there we find the birth-rate exceedingly, 



DOMESTIC WORRY 165 

excessively high. On the other hand, where there 
is room for the children, leisure for their care, 
abundance of money for their up-bringing, and no 
occasion whatever for any substantial worry on 
account of them, there we find the birth-rate ex- 
ceedingly, excessively low. The wives of the pros- 
perous classes have come to the conclusion, it would 
appear, that motherhood is not worth the trouble 
which it involves, and to them the rebuke of the 
Bishop of London is surely applicable. 

For it is true that, no matter how prosperous 
and favourable the circumstances be, the upbring- 
ing of children involves some worry.- Let us, then, 
briefly enumerate the various means by which this 
worry may be prevented, and then let us inquire 
as to the consequences. 

First of all, and most effectively, these worries 
may be prevented by renunciation of the oppor- 
tunity of parenthood altogether, as we have seen. 
Thus relief from domestic worry is purchased — 
but at what cost? 

The price is national or racial, nd personal. 
The nation or the race must pay, for the duty of 
its continuance is relegated to its lower classes. 
Both on the score of heredity and on the score of 
environment the national consequences are disas- 
trous. They are disastrous on the score of he- 
redity because the thus-purchased freedom from 
domestic worry of the wives of the prosperous 
classes means that the better stocks of the nation 
contribute less than their share, whilst the inferior 



166 WORRY 

stocks contribute more than their share, to the 
replenishment of the race. My friend Mr. Francis 
Galton, the distinguished cousin of the immortal 
Darwin, has proved that individual ability and 
worth are largely determined by inheritance. His 
scheme of Eugenics proposes that the best indi- 
viduals in a nation must be the chief factors in the 
upkeep of the birth-rate; but the current practice 
of purchasing freedom from domestic worry is 
precisely the reverse of what he desires. Thus the 
freedom of selfish individuals from worry is pur- 
chased at the threatened cost of racial deterioration. 

But on the score of environment, also, the na- 
tional consequences are disastrous; for where the 
environment is good, well fitted for the successful 
nurture of children, there the children do not 
appear ; whereas they appear only too abundantly, 
not only in perpetuation of the inferior stocks, but 
also in the circumstances — such as poverty and 
over-crowding — where children cannot properly 
be reared. Hence another potent cause of national 
danger. 

And, as I have said, the price at which freedom 
from domestic worry is purchased is also personal. 
The renunciation of the joys of parenthood, be- 
cause its worries are held to more than counter- 
balance them, involves an injury to the character 
of the selfish individual. It injures marriage and 
married life, rendering it incomplete, and depriving 
it of its great opportunity for the ripening and 
ennoblement of character. 



DOMESTIC WORRY 167 

I submit that relief from domestic worry is not 
worth purchasing on these terms. 

Secondly, these domestic worries may be pre- 
vented, as many a mother mistakenly thinks, by 
neglect to perform that maternal duty which 
Nature has indicated in the person of every woman. 
Doctors know that the proportion of mothers who 
cannot nurse their babies is really very small; but 
the proportion of those in the prosperous classes 
who will not is large and constantly increasing. 
The price paid for the shirking of this source of 
worry or inconvenience is constantly expressed by 
the actual death of the baby, or permanent injury 
to its health in consequence of malnutrition : whilst 
the neglect of this duty inflicts an irreparable injury 
upon the moral nature of the mother — an injury 
which is only too likely to react for evil upon the 
remote future as well as upon the immediate future 
of her child, should it survive. 

Thereafter much domestic worry may be averted 
by the mother in prosperous circumstances, by the 
unlimited employment of hirelings to look after 
her children. This will leave her freedom for the 
following of her own desires; incidentally it can 
scarcely fail to injure her children. She would not 
like it said that she neglects their education — yet 
the child's nurse constitutes a vastly important 
factor therein. Elsewhere I have defined educa- 
tion as " the provision of an environment " — the 
dominant factor of which is the child's constant 
companion. The mother who prefers a hireling 



168 WORRY 

to herself as her child's companion admits either 
that she regards herself as inferior to the pur- 
chased nurse for the purpose of her child's edu- 
cation, or else that the trouble of providing the 
child with the best companion does not seem to her 
worth the candle. It is an unpleasant dilemma, 
but there are only too many mothers to whom it is 
applicable. 

The necessity for constant care of a child must 
necessarily become irksome, of course, and the 
opportunity of sending it away to school, even for 
only a few hours a day, is heartily and very often 
prematurely welcomed. But when the child of 
either sex has reached the age of seven years the 
various elements of its brain structure are in their 
place, and it is ready to begin what is commonly 
understood by the word " education." If the school 
be wisely chosen, — even at the cost of no small 
worry, perhaps, to the mother, — and if the moral 
character of the child, even at a similar cost, has 
previously been well trained, the beginning of 
school life will undoubtedly mean to the mother 
a very considerable relaxation of worry and anxiety 
regarding her child. But if she has not worried 
as she should, either in preparing the child for 
school or in choosing a school for the child, she 
may receive her deserts in the shape of more 
trouble, anxiety, annoyance and worry than ever, 
when the school period arrives. 

A few years later there comes the powerful and 
popular temptation to which many readers will be 



DOMESTIC WORRY 169 

surprised to find me applying that sinister term — 
I mean the boarding-school. 

If there be sufficient money to spare there is no 
question that the sending of a boy or a girl to a 
boarding-school will save the mother a great deal 
of worry. In short, she pays some one else to 
worry for her. The reader will observe that I 
treat this subject under Domestic Worry, and that 
I refer to the mother rather than the father. I do 
so because it is my belief that the mother rather 
than the father is the vital factor and the naturally 
appointed factor in the care and education of a 
child of either sex for many years. This always 
remains true, of course, of the girl, but it remains 
true of the boy also, until, at any rate, he begins 
definitely to approach the period during which he 
will develop into a man. And in criticising the 
boarding-school system of avoiding domestic worry 
it is especially the mother of whom I think, in the 
case of a boy particularly. It is the loss of the 
womanly influence — which is at its highest, need 
I say, in the maternal influence — that constitutes 
the most serious and fatal of all the many serious 
and fatal objections that may be urged against the 
boarding-school system. I will freely admit that 
boarding-schools are an unfortunate necessity for 
children whose parents are dead or drunken or 
exiled or otherwise incapable of performing the 
supreme duties of parenthood, but I am only in 
line with medical men and practical psychologists 
and educationists generally, when I say that the 



170 WORRY 

boarding-school, as an institution for boys and girls 
whose parents are living and capable of perform- 
ing the duties of parenthood, is an evil thing. 
Furthermore, I honestly believe that boarding- 
schools are consequences of worry — invented for 
its avoidance. The long and the short of it is 
that it requires care and love and patience to look 
after one's own children, and that at best this 
can never be accomplished without much anxiety, 
trouble, and worry. The well-to-do parent is at 
least aware of this elementary fact. The neces- 
sary cheque is written, and the honourable and 
responsible burden is transferred to hired shoul- 
ders. It is an effective means for the fashionable 
mother, whereby she may dispose of a chief source 
of domestic worry. It is true that there are 
always the holidays, which are a nuisance; but 
one can usually get away from home at such times, 
and when they come to their welcome end one 
can heave a sigh of relief as the youngster is 
safely packed off in a train for another few months 
to come. 

We have seen elsewhere that worry may be 
normal or morbid. Much domestic worry, I insist, 
is normal worry. The selfish avoidance of it works 
disaster in a woman's character and produces that 
lamentable decadence of motherhood which is so 
characteristic of certain classes in our time and 
civilisation. "What has posterity done for me?" 
asked Napoleon — a highly characteristic question. 
The modern mother only too oftsu acts as if she 



DOMESTIC WORRY 171 

had put some such question regarding her imme- 
diate posterity — her own children. She recks 
nothing for the price which she pays for the avoid- 
ance of worry — or rather, she estimates it by the 
cheque-book method. The cheque-book, however, 
furnishes no calculus of character, and does not 
express the birth-rate of the well-to-do classes, nor 
the fact that these classes are in continuous process 
of extinction and replacement from below. In 
order to support by an unbiassed and highly 
qualified witness, the estimate of boarding-schools 
which is so commonly held amongst medical men 
and psychologists, I will quote the words of an 
article by Dr. Gray, the Headmaster of Bradfield 
College. They are to be found in the " Hibbert 
Journal " for July, 1906, and the most remarkable 
fact about them is that the writer shows no signs 
elsewhere in his article of any recognition of their 
gravity. I have read them again and again in 
amazement. Had I dared I might have written 
them myself, except that I might have failed to 
express myself with such force. It must be re- 
membered, says Dr. Gray : — 

"(1) That we have to deal with a society of im- 
mature minds and plastic morality. 

"(2) That this society is artificially constituted; 
that is, it does not proceed on the lines of family 
relations, which nature intended should be followed 
throughout life, but is isolated and ' monastic/ 

" Here, then, at the most critical stage of a boy's 
life, at a time when, along with violent physical 
changes, the character is being formed with at least 



172 WORRY 

equally startling rapidity, when reason is often com- 
paratively weak, and sentiment and emotion are 
always strong, a boy is taken away from the forma- 
tive influences of the other sex, from the mother and 
sister, and thrust into a community composed of one 
sex only, where all do the same things, think the 
same thoughts, and talk round the same confined 
circle of subjects." 

Nothing is here said about the effects upon the 
parents' character; and yet enough is said to be 
beyond answer. 

Let us sum up, so far. 

The worries of motherhood may be most effec- 
tively prevented, no doubt, by the renunciation of 
motherhood; but similarly life's little ills may be 
prevented by suicide, or the trouble of keeping 
one's nails clean by amputation of the arm. My 
comparisons will not seem extreme to any true 
mother who reads them. 

Or the worries of motherhood may be prevented 
by the relegation of the mother's duties to succes- 
sive hirelings at successive stages, and here a simi- 
lar objection applies: the cost to the mother and 
the cost to her child are immeasurably too high. 

There is, indeed, no absolute preventive that is 
worth its cost ; only the mother who does not car e 
does not worry — sometimes. But it is the assured 
fact of experience that the mother will reduce her 
occasion for worry to the minimum, who regards 
her function as a noble vocation, worthy of the 
utmost, both mentally and morally, of which she 
is capable. Such a mother will have many little 



DOMESTIC WORRY 173 

worries in her children's earlier years, for her ideals 
will be unattainably high — she would have her 
children perfect ; but here as everywhere the stitch 
in time saves nine ; you may bend the twig though 
you cannot incline the tree, and the mothers whose 
sons and daughters, as they reach the years of wil- 
fulness and experiment and danger, cause them the 
w r orry that scars the heart and tells upon the very 
gait, or even drags down their grey hairs with 
sorrow into the grave, are only too often the 
mothers who spared themselves little worries when 
the growing plant was young and tractable. The 
question for the mother is this: Will you worry 
a little now, and act, or will you worry, even to 
despair, hereafter, when you cannot act though 
you would? 



XIV 
WORRY AND OLD AGE 

Just as worry in childhood, and worry in woman 
or domestic worry, show special characters and 
need special consideration, so worry in old age is 
distinct in certain respects, and forms a type of its 
own. Worry differs in its objects and its charac- 
ter at different ages, and in the two sexes, and, of 
course, in different individuals — in accordance 
with the psychological differences many of which 
are familiar to all of us. Every one knows, for 
instance, how largely youth lives in the future, and 
old age in the past. Hence, if we divide worry, 
according as to whether it looks before or looks 
after, into anticipative worry and retrospective 
worry, we may expect to find, and we do find, anti- 
cipative worry predominating in youth, whilst old 
age displays retrospective worry, and especially 
that variety of it which we call regret. 

Babyhood worries not at all, for it cannot, worry 
being dependent upon self-consciousness, which 
babyhood does not possess. Childhood should 
never worry, and does so, as we have seen, only 
when its elders maltreat it, wilfully or otherwise. 
Youth is more self-conscious, and worries not a 
little; but it is resilient, elastic, enthusiastic; and 



WORRY AND OLD AGE 175 

not merely has it only a brief past to survey with 
regrets, but regret is alien to the normal psy- 
chology of youth, whose mottoes are always " Ex- 
celsior," and " En avant." Regret in youth may 
be poignant for a brief space, but it is always evan- 
escent in health. And youth sleeps well, takes 
little thought for the morrow, and has few 
responsibilities. 

Adult life sees a further access of proneness to 
worry. The struggle for existence becomes keen, 
the might-have-beens cannot always be forgotten 
or dismissed, responsibilities multiply, the future 
is often uncertain. Worry, both retrospective and 
anticipative, has many opportunities — in men and 
in women alike. Yet adult life is, for most of us, 
a period of very fair health, and some conscious- 
ness of fitness. Further, one's time is usually well 
occupied; it does not hang heavy on one's hands; 
there are a thousand interests in this manifold 
world of ours, and the average man or woman is 
scarcely likely to become too self-centred or self- 
conscious. 

Now old age, we know, should be green and hale 
and peaceful. " Life's fitful fever " is burning 
low, there is little need for hurry, the tide of op- 
portunity may have been taken at the flood, or may 
have been allowed to pass unused ; but, at any rate, 
it has passed. Years should bring the philosophic 
mind, an outlook calm, serious, not easily per- 
turbed, an old age " serene and bright." Wise old 
Adam puts it well in " As You Like It," when he 



176 WORRY 

says, " Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, 
Frosty but kindly.' ' But I cannot do better than 
resort to Wordsworth for descriptions of old age 
as it should and may be, in man and in woman. 
For the first, I quote the last few lines of "The 
Happy Warrior " : — 

" Who, not content that former worth stand fast 
Looks forward, persevering to the last, 
From well to better, daily self-surpast : 
Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth 
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth, 
Or he must fail, to sleep without his fame, 
And leave a dead unprofitable name — 
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause ; 
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws 
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause : 
This is the happy Warrior, this is He 
That every Man in arms should wish to be.'' 

And for the second, I quote the last stanza of 
" She was a phantom of delight " : — 

" And now I see with eye serene 
The very pulse of the machine ; 
A Being breathing thoughtful breath, 
A Traveller between life and death; 
The reason firm, the temperate will, 
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; 
A perfect Woman, nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort, and command; 
And yet a Spirit still, and bright 
With something of angelic light." 

Doubtless it is true and well that we can each 
of us point to examples of such old age ; but it is 
also the lamentable truth that these examples are 
the exception and not the rule^ Indeed, it is when 



WORRY AND OLD AGE 177 

old age creeps on that worry finds its chance at 
last. I do not attribute the contrast between old 
age as we most commonly see it and old age as it 
should and might be, to any moral degeneration 
of the race, but rather to inevitable causes that are 
not in themselves to be regretted. 

The fact is that the average type of humanity 
is undergoing a change in these days. Civilisation 
literally means city-fication, and the psychical type 
of the citizen is not the same as that of the rustic. 
To put the matter bluntly, the nearer a man is to 
the vegetable, the less will he worry. A vegetable 
marrow has no difficulty in preserving its mental 
repose, I fancy; and the man who is more or less 
a perambulating vegetable marrow is similarly 
favoured. Worry is the disease of the age, as I 
have called it, because it is a disease that specially 
affects the kind of men and women whom the age 
is producing. Like migraine, it is a " maladie des 
beaux esprits," and we are all becoming " beaux 
esprits ,: nowadays. Shakespeare's Adam was 
happily named, for he was a primitive type. He 
did not know the meaning of " nerves " ; he was 
as little likely to suffer from the " jumps " as a 
vegetable marrow. His mental and nervous pro- 
cesses were very slow, and probably nothing in the 
world could hurry them. Like a baby, he lived 
mainly in the present. When old age came upon 
him, his vital speed, never anything but leisurely, 
merely became a little slower still. His simple 
wants were assured, and he, like the baby we dis- 



12 



178 WORRY 

cussed in another chapter, had no interest in a 
Stock and Share List. He did not stamp about 
his room, as some of us do, waiting for the late 
edition of the evening paper. It was an easy- 
matter for him to preserve his mental peace; he 
had nothing to worry about, and scarcely had the 
mental apparatus for doing so, even if there had 
been occasion to use it. 

But the ordinary old man, or elderly man, of 
to-day is of a very different type. Our civilisation 
is producing men — and even women, too, in these 
later years — who cannot content themselves with 
the ordinary vegetative processes of eating and 
sleeping and sitting in the sun that satisfied their 
ancestors. The woman who has led a busy life in 
the control and direction of her home and children 
finds herself destined to pass her declining years 
in the home of a married child, perhaps, where 
she has no duties of any kind to perform. The 
best thing that can happen to her is that she shall 
soon have grandchildren to think about and help 
to care for. There is a very definite and very 
much to be pitied class of the community for whom, 
only quite lately, and only amongst the most ad- 
vanced nations, is any adequate mental occupation 
provided — the elderly women, whose children have 
taken wing, but whose activities, and especially 
their mental activities, are potentially unabated 
but have nothing to act upon. They have ex- 
perience, patience, insight, and their invaluable 
feminity; but society does not yet choose to avail 



WORRY AND OLD AGE 179 

itself of them. As the years advance, such women 
run a grave risk of becoming self-centred, losing 
their sense of proportion, and, since they have 
nothing worth while to concern themselves with, 
worrying about things that are not worth while. 

More familiar is the case of the man of the same 
type, who, being no student of psychology, has 
thought to enjoy his latter years by giving up his 
business, or who has been superannuated by some 
automatic arrangement. Time now hangs heavy 
on his hands, creeps with leaden pace, and the 
active mind, since it has no external outlet, begins 
to prey upon itself. The psychical characters of 
the old age of such a man cannot conceivably be 
the same as those of the man who has never used 
his mind at any time — the rustic, the cowherd, the 
agricultural labourer. 

Thus it is that the most familiar type of old age 
in our day is only too far from the ideal. Old age, 
as we are apt to meet it, has its own grievances; 
more than ever, we meet the laudator temporis 
acti, to whom each succeeding innovation is a new 
annoyance. Furthermore, a noteworthy disadvan- 
tage of the modification of mental type to which I 
have referred, is that the young and the active seem 
to have become — for reasons which we can now 
understand — less tolerant than ever of the foibles 
and frailties of age. We live at such high speed 
that the slow pace of age seems slower and more 
stupid than ever. We find it more difficult to 
sympathise, and our lack of sympathy necessarily 



180 WORRY 

makes old age more burdensome than ever. The 
idea of the family is waning, family ties are weak- 
ened by modern ease of locomotion and modern 
speed; we have no particular sentiment for a 
patriarch as such; the faster we move the wider 
must become the gap between ourselves and those 
who, like the aged, have ceased to move ; and if we 
were to be visited by bears, as were the children 
who mocked the bald-head in the Old Testament 
tale, few of us would escape the fatal hug. Even 
to the present writer, who is not exactly a veteran, 
it seems that reverence for age is less generally 
inculcated into children than it was when he was 
a child. 

In short, old age is probably less tolerated and 
less tolerable to-day than ever in the past. 

No wonder, then, that worry assumes a dire 
importance when age creeps on. In all times the 
old have been " out of it," and now they are more 
" out of it " than ever. We were all contented with 
a jog-trot formerly ; now we must have the motor- 
car — and old age would jog-trot still. 

It might be expected that, as death loomed 
nearer, religious worry would play a larger and 
larger part in the mental life of the aged. But 
this is entirely contrary to general experience. The 
youth who feared the " wrath to come " when it 
was relatively far away, is found to worry very 
little about it when it is presumably coming nearer. 
Old age is commonly merciful, and its religious 
outlook for itself sees less vengeance and more 



WORRY AND OLD AGE 181 

compassion than it used. A distinguished Ameri- 
can psychologist experimented with children of 
various ages, inquiring into the kind and measure 
of punishment which they allotted for various 
imaginary misdeeds. He found the youngest chil- 
dren vindictive, harsh, merciless ; like the older — 
that is to say, the younger — penal legislation, 
which would hang a boy for stealing a sheep. The 
older children were more merciful, and the older 
more merciful still, like the modern school of 
penology — thus affording one more illustration 
of the parallelism between racial and individual 
development. Thus old age begins to realise, as 
youth cannot, that " tout comprendre c'est tout 
pardonner/' and it expects some such allowances 
for itself when Death comes, as it now makes for 
others. Hence it is, as I have said, that religious 
worry, often so potent a factor in the psychical 
life of the young, is commonly much alleviated in 
old age. 

Now the worry of old age is not anticipative 
but retrospective; it is regret rather than appre- 
hension. There is also the querulous fretfulness 
about present trifles that is so unfortunately famil- 
iar to most of us who have lived with old people. 
The worry of old age, then, is regret and fret- 
fulness. 

I used to know an old man who had played 
cricket regularly, and played it very well, until he 
was over sixty — when a serious and nearly fatal 
illness put an end to his cricket for ever. The sum- 



182 WORRY 

mer was a miserable time for him. He could not 
keep away from a cricket match, and there he 
would sit, scornfully criticising the " form " of the 
youngsters, and telling, to inattentive ears, the tale 
of the sudden arrest of his own cricketing days. 
Ever his sad refrain was, " I was playing cricket 
two years ago." Alas! what word of comfort 
could be said? 

"Absence of occupation is not rest, 
The mind that 's vacant is a mind distrest," 

said Cowper. The lines are not exactly poetry, 
but they express a psychological truth, and it is 
especially applicable to old age. 

When one talked, or rather, when one listened 
to that poor old cricketer that had been and never 
again would be, one was afflicted with a sense of 
impotence to help; and also, sometimes, when 
imagination was astir, with a sense of foreboding : 
" How shall I feel when I can play cricket no 
more? " 

There is only one practical suggestion to make, 
and it is not new, but it is a good one. Elsewhere 
we have discussed the importance of hobbies in the 
preservation of the mental health. The curse of 
old age is precisely that " absence of occupation ,! 
of which Cowper wrote. He was a victim to mel- 
ancholia himself, poor fellow, and spoke of what 
he knew. The moral is that the wise man, just as 
he lays a little money by, in provision for the ma- 
terial wants of old age, will also lay a little mental 
riches by, for the mental wants of old age. If you 



WORRY AND OLD AGE 183 

live solely for cricket and billiards, like the old 
gentleman whom I have described, you will find 
your mind bankrupt when these are at last denied 
you ; your old age will be a protracted and weari- 
some effort to occupy time without the means of 
doing so; trivialities will become important, mem- 
ory a burden, life worthless to yourself and worth- 
less to your companions. 

As with the man who lives solely for sport, so 
with him who lives solely for business. His fate 
is vitam perdere propter causas vivendi — to lose 
all that makes life worth living on account of his 
efforts to obtain the means of living. He has had 
no time for reading, or gardening, or music, or 
poetry, or for the " flower of the mind " in any 
of its fragrant, lovely, and various forms. He has 
developed his psychical potentialities in one direc- 
tion alone — and when superannuation comes, his 
soul is bankrupt. His bank account is doubtless 
opulent; he has accumulated in abundance the 
material conditions which may be used for happi- 
ness and mental ease, but he has stunted, and ulti- 
mately strangled beyond revival, the psychical 
powers which should now enable him to utilise 
those means. He has time and money to spend, 
but he cannot spend his money in such a way as 
to make his time well-spent. Therefore he will 
have resort to the obvious device of increasing his 
material comforts; he will try to purchase hap- 
piness and the joy of life by complicated dinners, 
rare wines, fine cigars, and the like. He has had 



184 WORRY 

" no time " to cultivate the love of Nature, and so 
a walk in the country offers no attractions to him. 
Instead, he purchases a motor-car and tries to find 
joy in speed. Thus he neglects to take the neces- 
sary physical exercise, and as he is also over-eating 
and over-drinking, he beckons effectively, did he 
know it, to premature old age — senescence be- 
comes senility befote it need. His bodily health 
suffers, he becomes stout and gouty and scant of 
breath ; his sleep is impaired. In short, he uses 
his money to provide him with the physical state 
that predisposes to worry. Everything loses its 
flavour; long ago he starved his palate for poetry 
and high-thinking and flowers and music; now 
even his food becomes insipid, though his chef 
cook never so cunningly, and multiply condiments 
to the last degree; high living is no substitute for 
high thinking, nor condiments for the power to 
enjoy the companionship of children. 

My purpose in this book is not academic but 
practical; my desire is not to demonstrate any- 
thing, except in so far as the demonstration will 
effect something. If I were in medical practice as 
a psychologist — which I expect to be the new 
function of my profession in the coming days 
when physical disease is exterminated — and an 
old man were brought to me for my advice as to 
the means whereby to cure his fretfulness and irrit- 
ability, and make his life worth living, I should 
endeavour, I suppose, to discover the least atro- 



WORRY AND OLD AGE 185 

phied of his psychical potentialities — a not wholly 
wasted ear for music or interest in gardens — ■ and 
should prescribe a serious attempt to develop it, 
even at the eleventh hour, so that he might find a 
new interest in life. But it is to the prevention 
rather than the cure of worry in old age that I 
would direct the reader's attention here. 

Plainly, the moral of the preceding pages is that, 
if a man desires to avoid a burdensome, irritable, 
fretful old age, it behoves him duly to cultivate 
more than one, or even two, of the psychical pos- 
sibilities that are within him. Men of a former 
type could content themselves with a vegetable ease 
in their declining years; but men of the nervous, 
mental type that is characteristic of our time re- 
quire more than this. It is not only in Heaven that 
the wise man can lay up riches which neither moth 
nor rust can corrupt, and which are stored where 
thieves cannot break through and steal. There 
are few more pathetic sights than the old man or 
old woman, who cannot find means whereby to 
wile away even the few remaining years. If, how- 
ever, we aim at what Herbert Spencer called " com- 
plete living," to prepare us for which, and for no 
less, he said, is the function that education has to 
discharge, we need not fear the empty old age 
which, in accordance with a psychological law only 
too familiar, is necessarily a fretful, irritable old 
age, ever occupied with futile regrets or equally 
futile worrying about the merest futilities. If we 
strive to develop the whole mind, then there will 



186 WORRY 

always be something left, that will serve for inter- 
est and happiness, even to the last. 

Beyond a doubt, the most beautiful attribute of 
old age is its sympathetic interest in youth, — the 
fashion in which the old man lives again in- his 
children and grandchildren. This characteristic 
of old age at its best is the natural means whereby 
this period of life is made happy and interested, and 
worth living. Thus it is lonely old age that furn- 
ishes us with the saddest instances of fretfulness 
and what the Preacher meant by vanity. Very 
few, indeed, are the old men and women who do 
not find their lives worth clinging to in the com- 
panionship of affectionate grandchildren. The 
company of youth is of the very first value for age, 
and undoubtedly the company of age is of the 
utmost educative value for youth. The funda- 
mental social institution, which is the family, 
should normally provide for these needs ; pity 't is 
that our present civilisation so often displays a 
tendency to interfere with this great institution — 
the decadence of which has led to the destruction of 
so many previous civilisations. If old people are 
confined to the company of other old people, they 
hasten each other's downward course; there was 
a sound psychological truth symbolised in the old 
notion that the company of a young girl was the 
best means for the rejuvenescence of an old man. 
Probably never, however, was the tendency to 
abandon old age to its own devices so strong as 
it is to-day; and thus it is that the importance of 



WORRY AND OLD AGE 187 

worry in relation to old age is particularly evident 
in our time. It seemed to Herbert Spencer, when 
he was studying the practical application of ethical 
principles, that the care of the aged by their young 
descendants formed the fitting complement and 
return, for the care which, in previous years, they 
had devoted to those descendants when they were 
very young indeed ; and he regarded the imperfec- 
tion of this return, witnessed in our times, as the 
most conspicuous direction in which our practical 
morals are in need of improvement. There is as 
yet little sign of that improvement; and I doubt 
whether the aged were ever so much to be pitied 
as they are to-day. I have tried to show how, in 
consequence of the change in temperamental type, 
the psychical needs of old age are greater now than 
they used to be ; and it is this same change which, 
instanced in those members of the community who 
are not yet old, makes more difficult for them what 
has doubtless been difficult enough at all times — 
the tolerance of the whims and foibles of age, and 
the attempt to gratify them; as I have said, we 
live so rapidly that the contrast between the pace 
of youth and the leisurely canter of age is even 
more marked than it used to be. Observers tell 
us that the millions of sermons which are preached 
from Christian pulpits every year are undergoing 
a definite and, I doubt not, permanent change in 
the direction of a greater attention to questions of 
practical ethics rather than selfish questions con- 
cerned with the future of the hearer's own soul. 



188 WORRY 

Now that the number of those who live to an old 
age is becoming so very much greater, in conse- 
quence of amplified physiological and medical 
knowledge, it is much to be desired that those 
whose business it is to act as the moral mentors of 
the people should pay a very special attention to 
this question of practical morals — a more due ob- 
servance of which would tend, in the first place, to 
inculcate many old-fashioned virtues which are not 
too frequently illustrated in the young people of 
our time; and would tend, in the second place, to 
a very great amelioration of the lot of the aged. 



XV 

WORRY AND SEX 

There are certain matters about which it is 
equally difficult to speak either in explicit or in 
veiled language; and yet they demand speech. 
The bodily functions which are concerned with the 
continuance of the race are important on every 
conceivable ground; and they cannot be ignored 
here. I must therefore write a chapter which I 
would gladly omit if the doing so were not the 
neglect of an opportunity. I shall be exceedingly 
brief, but my brevity is in no sense an index to 
the importance of the subject. 

It is a commonplace amongst physicians that 
the functions to which I refer are the cause of an 
amount of youthful worry wholly out of propor- 
tion to any reasonable warrant that can be imagined 
for it. But the ways of worry, as we are continu- 
ally observing, reck little of reason or unreason. 
They obey organic laws which lie deeper than the 
reason, are aeons older than the reason, and admit 
no appeal to it. 

But that is an exaggeration. In point of fact 
we find that if a sufficiently powerful appeal be 
made to the reason in many a case of worry, the 



190 WORRY 

effort may be rewarded. If it were not so, there 
would be no possibility of use whatever in the 
writing of this chapter. I have only one point to 
make and I will quit further preamble. 

Civilised communities are infested with a large 
variety of thieves and blackguards and brutes. 
Our recrimination of these is commonly confined 
to those who do their work in an open and 
simple fashion — the pickpocket, the burglar, the 
murderer. Public opinion would never permit a 
pickpocket openly to use the public prints for the 
purpose, let us say, of advertising a course of les- 
sons in his nefarious art. But public opinion — - 
that " chaos of prejudices," as Huxley called it — 
does permit a whole motley host of abominable 
characters to use the public prints for the pursuit 
of their disgusting end — the accumulation of 
money by means which are immeasurably more 
criminal, more injurious to the community as a 
whole, and more fatal to many individuals, than 
all the burglaries ever committed. I refer to the 
advertisements dealing with sexual matters which, 
to the indelible disgrace alike of the advertisers, 
the proprietors, and editors of the advertising pub- 
lications, and the complaisant public, are to be 
found wherever one's eyes are turned. But my 
purpose is not the futile one, I fear, of expressing 
my opinion of these advertisements, but the more 
practical one of attempting, in so far as in me lies, 
to defeat their ends. 

These advertisers are well aware of the peculiar 



WORRY AND SEX 191 

fact of human nature to which I have referred — 
the fact that there is a very marked relation 
between worry and the bodily functions that con- 
cern the future of the race. This is not the place 
in which to attempt an explanation of the fact that 
a man who will display no concern about any of 
a hundred really serious or even desperate diseases, 
will be reduced to an agony of apprehension about 
the most ridiculously trivial, or even wholly imag- 
inary, disorder of these functions. Here we simply 
take it that the fact is so. Now this worry, 
whether warranted or unwarranted, is the prime 
source of the income of the vile advertisers of 
whom I speak. They have sufficient acuteness to 
observe this peculiar source of worry, and to recog- 
nise the importance of worry as a motor force in 
human action. Accordingly they set themselves, 
by every device that their filthy cunning can con- 
ceive, to write advertisements that shall foster, 
stimulate, and perpetuate this worry to the ut- 
most; and they succeed most abundantly. Every 
physician has again and again been consulted by 
young men who tell how their study of these 
advertisements affected them, as the advertiser 
hoped. 

The evil thus wrought cannot be fully expressed 
even by such terms as misery or agony. Fully to 
estimate it one would have to quote even the sta- 
tistics of suicide. In the effort to battle against 
it, I will strike two blows ; would that I had more 
power to my elbow. 



192 WORRY 

The first is to state, for the consideration of all 
serious and decent persons, the proposition that 
no advertisements dealing with sexual matters 
should appear in any public print of any kind. 
Advertisements in general meet a public need; and 
that is their sufficient warrant. These advertise- 
ments meet no such need: they benefit absolutely no 
one whatever but the advertiser. No one who pays 
for the insertion of any such advertisement has any 
knowledge, or drug, or anything else of the smallest 
value to offer in exchange for the money of the 
misguided persons who reply to him. Nowhere 
throughout the Anglo-Saxon world is there a 
single young man who cannot find some honest 
and responsible medical man to advise him on 
these matters. I personally am proud to ally 
myself with the medical profession, though I do 
not practise; and some reader may say that it is 
easy to understand why I offer the doctor rather 
than the advertiser for these cases: I am tak- 
ing the chance of doing a good turn to my own 
profession. 

But such a reader will be utterly wrong. He will 
be as wrong as wrong can be in the motive he 
imputes to me — though that is a detail. The 
important thing is that he will be wrong in assum- 
ing that my advice, if followed, would lead to 
the aggrandisement of my professional brethren. 
On the contrary, all these patients come to the 
doctor at last; and, by the time they reach him, 
there may very well be something really the matter, 



WORRY AND SEX 193 

— something that it takes a long time and many 
visits and fees to cure. If we are to reckon in terms 
of mere money, the medical profession has few 
better friends than these blackguards of whom I 
speak. 

I repeat, therefore, that no public or honest pur- 
pose is served by these advertisements concerning 
" Lost Vitality " and the like ; and that no adver- 
tisements, openly or in indirect language, dealing 
with sexual matters should be permitted in any 
public print. 

Lastly, let me attempt to outwit these advertisers 
by simply insisting upon the fact already stated. 
Their business is to produce as much worry as pos- 
sible about these matters. They have the very great 
advantage that such worry is very easily produced. 
Let me, then, do what I can to convince every 
reader whom the matter concerns that nine-tenths 
or ninety-nine hundredths of all worry about such 
things is without the smallest warrant or justifica- 
tion. The notion that there is warrant is kept up 
by, and for the benefit of, those who make their 
living in consequence of it. If their lying mouths 
were stopped, and if those whose professional duty 
it is to have some acquaintance with these matters 
were consulted, the sum of worry concerned with 
matters of sex would immediately and properly 
be reduced to trivial proportions. Let the reader 
take my word as to this; and hereafter, when 
his eyes light upon the kind of advertisement that 
might otherwise have had a horrible fascination for 

13 



194 



WORRY 



him, and might have produced in him that " sink- 
ing of the stomach " which the advertiser hoped 
to produce, let him do as I do. Let him merely 
murmur, " Liar, blackguard, and thief!" and be 
at ease. 






XVI 

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY 

That there is a profound difference between 
man and the lower animals every sane person rec- 
ognises. But the doctrine of evolution and the 
great impetus it has given to the study of man's 
poor relations has lately caused us to discard as 
untrue many of the assertions that used to be made 
as to the nature of the cardinal distinction between 
man and all other creatures. Man can no> longer 
be regarded as unique in that he can speak, nor in 
the fact that he stands erect, nor in the fact that he 
forms societies, nor in his possession of less or 
greater powers of reasoning. These and many 
other asserted means of distinction have had to be 
abandoned, and there are very many thinkers at 
the present day who are certain that, though there 
are differences of degree, there is no real distinction 
of kind between man and the lower animals that 
can be absolutely maintained. But however plausi- 
ble their arguments may appear, and I am far from 
underrating their importance, no scientific consid- 
erations so called can blind us to the fact that there 
is a something, whatever its nature, which man 
possesses, and which the lower animals do not, 
and which, when discovered, must surely serve to 



196 WORRY 

explain the evident and indisputable abyss which 
separates even the mediocre or inferior man from 
even the most intelligent of dogs or bees. 

Now there are many thinkers, both scientific and 
anti-scientific, who declare that the cardinal mark 
by which man may be distinguished from all his 
inferiors is his possession of self-consciousness. 
Mere consciousness, marvellous and inexplicable 
though that may be, is no distinguishing mark of 
man. The great French philosopher Descartes did 
indeed maintain that the lower animals are mere 
automata, destitute of consciousness, and indeed to 
be ranked as no more than mere animated ma- 
chines. But we can now guess that Descartes did 
not really believe in this proposition of his, and 
put it forward merely in order to protect himself 
and his books from the odium tkeologicum. Every 
fact which leads you to infer that your neighbour 
is conscious will lead you to the same inference 
in the case of your dog. Thus man is not dis- 
tinguished in being conscious, nor yet in being 
rational. This we may freely grant, and yet recog- 
nise that man is profoundly distinguished in being 
self-conscious. I for one believe that it is this 
power which makes man man, and that to it are to 
be traced all those characters, and affections, and 
disorders, and disabilities of the human mind 
which play such a gigantic part in human life, 
and which it is my purpose to study in these 
pages. If, therefore, we are to treat our subject 
in philosophic fashion, — the only fashion that is 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY 197 

likely to lead us to the truth, — it is necessary that 
we make a very careful study of self-consciousness, 
attempting to ascertain what it really means, in 
what it really consists, and for what it counts in 
human life. 

Self-consciousness is the recognition by each of 
us of the self that is in him — the formal and 
inflexible appreciation by his own mind of the fact 
that he is an individual or a subject, moving in a 
world which is not himself, but the object of his 
mind. We may trace the development of self- 
consciousness in the infant; indeed, I know no 
study more interesting than that of the slow devel- 
opment in a new human creature of that recognition 
of himself upon which his claim to rank as human 
really depends. Tennyson has well expressed the 
difference between the conscious but not self-con- 
scious infant, and the more highly developed crea- 
ture, now definitely to be ranked as human, who has 
attained to the recognition of his own individual- 
ity. 1 The poet tells us how at last the child, in the 

1 The baby new to earth and sky, 

What time his tender palm is prest 
Against the circle of the breast, 
Has never thought that i( this is I " : 

But as he grows he gathers much, 
And learns the use of " I " and " me," 
And finds " I am not what I see 

And other than the things I touch." 

So rounds he to a separate mind 
From whence clear memory may begin, 
As thro' the frame that binds him in 

His isolation grows defined. 

In Memoriam. Canto XLV. 



198 WORRY 

course of his experience, is able to " learn himself/' 
discovers his isolation and rounds to a separate 
mind in which clear memory may be possible. The 
dog, of course, has memory, but it is not the same 
as that which Tennyson means by clear memory, — 
the clear memory of the man who says, " That 
happened to me," or " I was there," in order to say 
which it is necessary first to have discovered the 
Ego or the /. But this possession of clear memory 
represents only one-half of the significance of self- 
consciousness. It is, perhaps, the very clearness of 
memory in man that enables him to discover him- 
self, and this discovery thereafter gives new mean- 
ing and importance to memory, but it does much 
more. It enables man not only to look behind him, 
sometimes with indifference, sometimes with the joy 
of pleasing retrospection, sometimes with that dis- 
tress which is one form of worry, sometimes with 
that commingled joy and sorrow expressed by the 
poet, who says that " a sorrow's crown of sorrow 
is remembering happier things," and sometimes in 
that mood of chastened joy in which one recalls 
the " tender grace of a day that is dead," — but 
also to look forward, to project himself into the 
future, to fear and to hope. " We look before and 
after, and pine for what is not," says Shelley, 
and Pope has declared that " man never is but 
always to be blest." Both of these poets were 
hinting at what we call worry, and in doing so 
they had to lay stress upon this power of self- 
consciousness which enables man to transport him- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY 199 

self from the Here and Now, in which alone 
the lower animals live, to the future and the 
past, the may-be and the might-have-been. Shake- 
speare has expressed the truth upon which I am 
insisting in that final way which needs no comment 
or amplification. Anatomists, biologists, psycholo- 
gists, philologists, students of society and man- 
ners, and literary triflers, — these may all be coun- 
selled to seek no further for the differentia, as 
St. Thomas Aquinas would have said, that is the 
appanage of man. All that can be said and is to 
be said has been said once and for all by Shake- 
speare, in words which are the highest poetry 
because they are also the highest science, — the 
product not merely of the unlicensed poetic im- 
agination, but of what Tyndall called " the scien- 
tific use of the imagination " : Man is made ivith 
such large discourse, looking before and after. 

The prime condition, then, of worry in all its 
forms is this self-consciousness which is the su- 
preme characteristic of man. In popular speech, 
self-consciousness has a specialised meaning, and 
implies that undue recognition of consequences to 
self which only too frequently brings about the 
very consequences — such as failure to make a 
successful public appearance — which its subject 
seeks to avoid. Elsewhere we consider this hu- 
man failing at due length, but here we must rec- 
ognise that this is not the proper meaning of 
self-consciousness, which is none other than the 
recognition and consciousness of the identity of the 



200 WORRY 

self, — a faculty which at least one philosopher, 
Thomas Henry Green, of Oxford, has regarded as 
the only reality in the universe, and as thus the 
creator, for each individual, of the universe he 
knows — of his external world ; the self-conscious 
Ego is the creator of all its objects : " I am the 
centre " — and the maker — " of my own uni- 
verse." This is but the idle tale of a metaphysician, 
but it will suffice to show us how fundamental and 
necessary is this character of the human mind. It 
is the prime condition of worry, w r hich, without it, 
could not exist; and the first fact which we have 
to recognise is, therefore, the fact that, so long as 
man is to be man, it must always be possible for 
him to worry. If man is to be man, it is necessary 
that he be able to look before and after. The next 
thing for us to ascertain is evidently the purpose 
with which he exercises this supreme function. 

This question can be easily answered. The fun- 
damental character of every conscious thing, lower 
animal or man, is the desire for life, and this is 
ultimately identifiable with the desire for happiness. 
Of this character, it may or may not be possible to 
give some philosophical explanation, in terms of 
biology, perhaps, or in terms of one or another 
religious creed ; but for our purposes it will suffice 
to accept it as a universal and indisputable fact. 
Happiness is " our being's end and aim " ; and we 
differ from the un-self-conscious lower animals, in 
that we are able to anticipate the future, to identify 
ourselves as the subjects for happiness, and thus 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY 201 

to make it our conscious and recognised end and 
aim. If you are worrying about something that 
may happen next week, the truth of the matter is 
that you want to be happy next week, — it matters 
not whether your happiness is to be conditioned by 
your own state next week, or by the fact that you 
will be able to observe, and thus indirectly partici- 
pate in, the happiness of those you love, — and 
you are worrying because of your fear that such 
happiness may not be attained. Similarly, if you 
fear that you may die next week, you are worrying 
because, conscious of yourself, you are apprehensive 
lest your self may fail of life and of the happiness 
which life may bring you. As long as man is man, 
it will always be possible for him to worry. 

We have already reached a fact of the first im- 
portance, — that worry, or, at any rate, what we 
may agree to call anticipative, as distinguished 
from retrospective, worry, is conditioned by two 
fundamental characters of human nature, the fac- 
ulty of self-consciousness, and the desire for life 
and happiness. And it will be well to convince 
ourselves that both of these characters are desirable 
and necessary. Of the first no more need be said : 
to abolish self-consciousness would be to destroy 
the dignity and the distinguishing mark of man, 
and is, in any case, impossible. " Man alone has 
the power to make himself ridiculous," and man 
alone can worry ; but these are the " defects of his 
qualities." But that it is a similar necessity cannot 
be dogmatically asserted of the desire for life and 



202 WORRY 

happiness. On the contrary, directly we come to 
consider the subject, we find that various philo- 
sophical and religious creeds have repudiated the 
desire for life, and have denounced the search for 
happiness; and incidentally we may discover, per- 
haps for the first time, the stupendous importance 
of worry in the life of our race, and the propor- 
tionate measure of attention which has been paid 
it by the makers of religions and systems of 
thought. Worry is no merely local phenomenon ; it 
is no product of recent civilisation or of the in- 
creased ardour of the " struggle for existence " ; on 
the contrary, it is common to all races and all times, 
and has been recognised as one of the great facts 
of human life in every age and place. I do not 
say that the need for a sober and thoughtful dis- 
cussion of worry is not particularly urgent to-day, 
but I propose to show that it has ever been urgent ; 
and this for the very reasons upon which I have 
endeavoured to insist, — that self-consciousness and 
the desire for life and happiness are invariable 
and universal facts of human nature in its natural 
state. 

If, in the first place, we seek the evidence fur- 
nished by Christianity, we are readily rewarded. 
In the course of the Sermon on the Mount, the 
Founder of Christianity said, " Take therefore no 
thought for the morrow : for the morrow shall take 
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto 
the clay is the evil thereof." The assertion of the 
futility of worry and of the reason of that futility 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY 203 

is a leading principle of what may still claim to be 
the greatest of all religions — which has dominated 
the most important part of humanity for nearly 
two thousand years. This quotation tends, there- 
fore, strongly to support my proposition that worry 
is an almost inevitable consequence of the facts of 
human nature, to be avoided only by the power of 
a living creed of some kind or other. 

If now we turn our eyes still further to the East, 
and to the still more distant past, we find fresh 
evidence that worry is a fact coterminous with hu- 
man life. The natural tendency to worry is fully 
recognised in Buddhism. The attempt of this creed 
to counteract the tendency is indeed more radical 
than that of Christianity. Buddhism goes to the 
very root of the matter by denying the validity of 
the desire for life. Whilst Christianity promises 
eternal life, free from all earthly cares, Buddhism 
declares that life itself is no boon, and promises 
eternal annihilation to those who follow its precepts. 
There is no more striking testimony to the univer- 
sality and importance of worry than the Buddhist 
doctrine of Nirvana. The authorities disagree as 
to the exact meaning of this doctrine ; some assert 
that it means annihilation, some that it means ulti- 
mate absorption of the individual in the universal ; 
but no matter how many and how various readings 
of Nirvana we encounter, we are able to discern a 
common element in them all, and it is certainly this 
common element that is the very essence of the 
conception. Whatever else Nirvana does or does 



204 WORRY 

not mean, it assuredly is a doctrine of ultimate 
peace of mind. Now a foretaste of Nirvana may- 
be attained even here and now, if the adept will but 
recognise the futility of life, and will thus succeed 
in achieving the extinction of desire. Thus Buddh- 
ism, recognising the futility of worry, and its all 
but inevitable occurrence, if life be regarded as 
worth living, sought to choke the stream at the 
very fountain-head by denying this worth of life. 
It is indeed a pessimistic creed ; if you are to live 
you must worry, and there is thus no remedy but 
to cease to live, or at least merely to live under 
protest, to endure life patiently, and welcome its 
end as your reward. Here Buddhism anticipates 
many subsequent forms of pessimism. The Stoics, 
for instance, taught a very similar doctrine, and 
the Cynics, with what Lewes calls their " osten- 
tatious display of poverty," * whilst neighbours 
were worrying in their haste to be rich. The Stoic 
doctrine was that " the pleasures and the pains of 
the body are to be despised ; only the pleasures and 
pains of the intellect are worthy to occupy man. 
By his passions he is made a slave." The passion 
for happiness and for life — this must be sup- 
pressed. Worry is a consequence of the most fun- 
damental emotions or passions of man, and these 
must be conquered. 

Many more illustrations might be cited, but I will 
content myself with two. In the Book of Ecclesias- 
tes we find the same recognition of worry amongst 

1 Biographical History of Philosophy. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY 205 

the Hebrews as amongst the Indians and the 
Greeks ; whilst a poet of our own race and time has 
written of " the fret here . . . where but to think 
is to be full of sorrow and leaden-eyed despairs." 1 
One and all, these teach us that life is inseparable 
from cares, that it is better " to cease upon the mid- 
night with no pain," — " wherefore I praised the 
dead which are already dead more than the living 
w T hich are yet alive " ; or, at the very least, that we 
must extinguish that desire to live which is the 
root condition of all care, and worry, and fear, and 
apprehension whatsoever. 

Thus it might be that we had already reached 
the goal of our present inquiry. Again and again 
there has been offered to men a solution of their 
difficulty. It amounts simply to this : care and 
worry are inseparable from self-consciousness and 
from the desire to live, which necessarily implies 
the fear that one may not live, or may not live 
as one might live; but this very emotional state 
which is generated by the desire for life deprives 
life of any value that it might otherwise have had. 
Life is thus not worth living, and may be made 
bearable only by the recognition of this fact. Rec- 
ognising that worry is inseparable from the desire 
to live, you must extinguish this desire and so will 
find peace, having lost what was, indeed, not worth 
having. 

But this is a cure for worry which, though effec- 
tive for the purposes of those who employ it, cannot 

1 Keats' " Ode to a nightingale." 



206 WORRY 

be accepted by us. We repudiate it because we 
deny the truth of the assumption upon which it 
rests. We believe that life is worth living, and 
therefore worth desiring. We cannot sacrifice the 
desire to live, even for release from the burden of 
care, which is seemingly inseparable from that 
desire. 

Plainly, if life be not worth living, whether on 
account of its inherent defects or on account of 
the worry which is inseparable from it, we have 
reached the end of our argument. The cause of 
worry is life, and its cure is death. But if life be 
worth living, and we can satisfy ourselves of this 
truth, it is necessary to ask whether worry is 
really necessary, whether it develops by continuous 
evolution from a power of prevision which is es- 
sentially benign, and whether, by some internal 
discipline, or by a fresh orientation to the facts of 
life, we may avoid the evil thing. 

Pleasures and pains, happiness and unhappiness, 
cannot be subjected to quantitative study, — that 
is to say, their intensity and force cannot be accur- 
ately measured, but we assume that some sort of 
measurement is possible when we say that life must 
be worth living if, on the average, it brings a sur- 
plus of happiness. That it does bring such a surplus 
only the very few and the very unfortunate will 
dispute. In the sense that we think life is worth 
living, we are nearly all optimists. But it is a 
highly important thing to ascertain the manner in 
which our opinion is formed, for, when we come 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY 207 

to analyse the varieties of optimism, we discover a 
very important fact which directly bears upon the 
genesis of worry. I have elsewhere argued that 
we may recognise three varieties of optimism — 
rational, emotional, and sensory or organic. By 
rational optimism I mean the deliberate acceptance 
of the view that life is worth living, following upon 
a sober, intellectual consideration of the facts of 
life, more especially from the biological standpoint. 
In this sense rational optimism is the creed of the 
great majority of thinking men; they hold that 
life is worth living — even this present mortal life 
— because we are so constructed that life brings us 
a surplus of pleasurable feeling. They base their 
optimism, not upon their individual sensations, not 
upon any creed instilled into their uncritical youth, 
but upon scientific observation alone. This is not 
the place in which to rehearse the scientific argu- 
ments in favour of the view that life is worth 
living. I would merely ask the reader to accept 
for our present purposes rational optimism as an 
article of scientific faith, and a necessary outcome 
of the theory of evolution. It is not the optimism 
of Pope who teaches that all partial evil is universal 
good, nor that of Socrates who avowed that to the 
good man no evil thing can happen, nor that of 
Browning who teaches that there shall never be one 
lost good, nor that of Leibnitz who asserted that 
this is the best of all possible worlds. Least of all 
is it the optimism which asserts that whatever is 
is right; but merely it asserts that, constructed as 



208 WORRY 

we are, life brings us, on the average, a surplus of 
happiness, worry notwithstanding. 

Emotional optimism I call that which depends 
upon the possession of some creed, such as that of 
Socrates, already quoted, or the belief in the con- 
ventional Heaven, or that of the Persian poet: 
" He 's a good fellow, and all will be well." The 
embodiment of some such creed in religion must be 
considered in our final chapter. 



XVII 
THE VARIETIES OF WORRY 

Here we must include an academic chapter in 
which we may attempt a formal classification of 
worry. 

Perhaps the foremost distinction for us to rec- 
ognise is that betw r een normal and morbid worry; 
such a distinction must exist, difficult though it 
may be in many instances to define the exact limita- 
tions of the two classes. 

It is plain that so long as man is self-conscious, 
and capable of prevision and desirous of life and 
happiness, he can scarcely banish from his mind 
the consideration of forthcoming events which are 
likely or certain to rob him of what he desires. 
Such worry must be regarded as normal, nor will it 
do offhand to say that such worry, though normal, 
is undesirable and useless. Directly we come to 
think of it, we see that it is impossible to draw any 
absolute distinction between the wise and necessary 
process of attempting to meet coming difficulties 
with no appreciable depression of mind, and the 
performance of the same process with consciousness 
of fear or worry. Again, it may be certain that 
though philosophic calm is often a very admirable 
possession, yet there are times when it may be a 



210 WORRY 

curse, if not to self, then to others. " We have to 
take the world as we find it " has been the motto 
of the impotent and the forgotten of all ages, but 
it was a lie in the beginning, is now, and ever shall 
be. It is writ large in universal history that dis- 
content and doubt are the seeds of all moral and 
intellectual progress. Some may be disposed, hast- 
ily, I think, to deny that worry for the sake of 
self can ever be normal, or healthy, or reverend; 
but few who have considered the lives of the great 
reformers will dare to deny that worry for the sake 
of others may be not only normal and healthy, but 
adorable and potent — either the supreme agent or 
a symptom of the supreme agent in the ameli- 
oration of the world. Every prophet, Hebrew, 
Christian, Buddhist, or Agnostic, whose words 
have earned the right to remembrance, has been 
one who worried. As John Howard and Elizabeth 
Fry worried about our prisoners, Florence Night- 
ingale about our soldiers, General Booth about the 
masses, so, in due reverence be it said, did the 
Founder of Christianity : " O Jerusalem, Jerusa- 
lem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them 
which are sent unto thee, how often would I have 
gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye 
would not! Behold, your house is left unto you 
desolate.' ' 

To deny that worry may sometimes be not only 
normal but necessary and salutary, is to accept 
Stoicism, Quietism, the doctrine of laisser faire, 



THE VARIETIES OF WORRY 211 

and the noble thought, " It will be all one a century 
hence." Unselfish worry has been one of the sav- 
ing forces of history, one of the greatest friends of 
mankind. That is the meaning of the word " agon- 
ies " in the final couplet of the sonnet to Toussaint 
FOuverture, which we quoted in our first chapter. 

Of course, our recognition of unselfish worry 
and the part it has played ought to interest us in 
the question of the personal consequences to the 
prophet or philanthropist. The last thing we desire 
is to cure his noble passion, but nevertheless we may 
ask whether there is not some fine philosophy capa- 
ble of shielding him from personal ill, such as 
assuredly befalls those who worry for self alone. 

Nature, we may hope, is on the side of him who 
worries for others, but she never fails to avenge 
herself upon him who worries for self. The self 
cannot cheat disease and death for ever, but the 
man whose desire is not for self but for the race 
is immune from personal defeat ; his apparent fail- 
ure may mean the ultimate triumph of his cause, as 
the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. 

If we are to be reasonable, we must agree to 
recognise the existence of a selfish worry which, 
whether useless or not, can scarcely be regarded as 
morbid, though it is in a vastly different category 
from the unselfish worry which we have just 
admired. Doubtless the greater part of all worry 
whatsoever is selfish worry which is somewhere on 
the border-line between the morbid and the normal. 
On the other hand, cases of morbid, unselfish worry 



212 WORRY 

are very rare, occurring only as a species of religi- 
ous mania or fanaticism, and impossible of occur- 
rence amongst any people that had abandoned the 
morbid theological ideas which are fast sinking 
into permanent decay. 

Again, there is the classification of worry accord- 
ing to time. It is the essence of worry that is not 
concerned with the present, but either with the 
future or the past. In our own generation, it is 
the looking before that is most frequently accom- 
panied by worry, and this is evidently the only kind 
of worry that can possibly be of any use. The 
proper attitude to adopt towards past incidents 
that tend to induce worry is that of the admonition, 
" Follow Me, and let the dead bury their dead." 

There can be little doubt that the development of 
the psychical nature of man has led to a progressive 
change in the relative proportions of anticipative 
and retrospective worry. The act of imagination 
is involved in all worry ; we either recall the past or 
we body forth the future. Of these two processes, 
the easier and older is undoubtedly that which in- 
volves merely the fundamental power of memory. 
But in these days we are learning more and more 
the depth of wisdom contained in the philosophy, — 
for it is a whole philosophy, — " Let byegones be 
byegones." True it is that the past is unalterable, 
but nothing can be more utterly false than to in- 
fer that the influence of the past upon the future is 
unalterable by the manner in which we contemplate 
it. We cannot alter the past, but we can and con- 



THE VARIETIES OF WORRY 213 

stantly do control and determine the influence of 
the past upon the future. Except in the very old, 
it is usually its bearing upon the future that haunts 
us when we worry over the past. We say to our- 
selves, " If only I had done so and so, I should not 
now be about to endure such and such." There is 
too much good common sense in most of us to per- 
mit of retrospective worry simply for its own sour 
sake, and most healthy people possess the healthy 
conviction regarding past sorrows that " it makes 
no odds, and it shall not be permitted to make any 
odds " ; in a word, we worry over the past not for 
itself but for its relation to the future; and the 
remedy for futile worry of this sort is the recogni- 
tion of the fact that we ourselves have to be reck- 
oned with in the chain of sequence. 

Elsewhere we considered the different kinds of 
worry dependent upon its locale — the worry 
of worldliness and the worry of other-worldliness. 
Finally, we may note the distinction between ma- 
terial and spiritual worry — the worry about mat- 
ter and the worry about mind. Elsewhere we see 
that a mark of the elevation of religion is the pro- 
gressive decadence of worry about material things 
and the progressive insurgence of worry about spir- 
itual things. 



XVIII 
THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 

Worry is so complicated a phenomenon, having 
so many varieties and causes, that the reader will 
not expect it to be curable by means of any single 
formula, or rule of life, or prescription. But the 
means of treatment, many though they are, may 
all be included under the two terms, physical and 
mental. Now, though worry is a disease of the 
mind, the physical or bodily aspects of its preven- 
tion and cure are not by any means to be ignored ; 
so intimate is the relation of mind and body 
that the merely physical, " materialistic " measures 
which affect this mental disease are well worthy of 
a chapter to themselves, and here I propose to con- 
fine myself to them. 

In a previous chapter we discussed at length some 
of the most important means by which health of 
mind may be maintained, and plainly the main- 
tenance of mental health is equivalent to the pre- 
vention of worry. We analysed the idea of a 
" holiday," which should have some part even in 
every working-day; and we saw that holidaying 
is one of the chief preventives of worry. Other 
and still more potent means for the prevention of 
worry there are, but these are not physical, but 



THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 215 

mental or spiritual. Hence we may now pass on 
to the cure of worry. 

Certain physical means for the cure of worry 
have already been discussed — to be utterly con- 
demned. These are drugs of various kinds, of 
which by far the most important is alcohol. I refer 
to them here merely in order that our discussion 
of the subject may be systematic. Our concern 
now is with physical cures of worry that do indeed 
cure, and amongst these such drugs have no place. 

In so far as a man worries about anything 
whatsoever, he is a practical pessimist. It does 
not matter in the least what his ostensible creed 
may be. He may formally subscribe to the most 
optimistic of creeds, and yet be a practical pessi- 
mist. On the other hand, his creed may be the 
most hopeless materialism, and yet he may be a 
practical optimist. The question for us to consider, 
then, is the physical means by which we may make 
practical optimists, all questions of philosophic or 
religious creed being for the present ignored. 

Thus our main business will be to consider the 
physical causes that make men into optimists 
rather than pessimists. The facts of alcohol prove 
abundantly that such physical causes do exist ; and 
we have to ask whether there are any which, like 
alcohol, will convert a man into an optimist, to 
whom worry is merely a name, but which, unlike 
alcohol, will do so permanently and securely. 

Now before we enter into the theory of the mat- 
ter, which will be found of the first practical im- 



216 WORRY 

portance, let us consider one of the most valuable 
and familiar means by which worry may be cured 
and prevented. The means to which I refer is 
sleep, and of course the first comment that springs 
to the reader's mind is that worry is destructive of 
sleep. It is of little avail to tell the victim of worry 
and consequent insomnia that sound, refreshing 
sleep will banish his cares. It is unfortunately 
true that we have here an instance of a vicious 
circle, and this fact makes it all-important that we 
should learn, if possible, how the circle may be 
broken. This is not the place, however, for a 
treatise on insomnia, and it is only possible to lay 
down a few salient propositions. 

The man who realises that he has become or is 
becoming a victim of worry must be advised con- 
sciously and resolutely to direct himself to the 
question of his sleep. It is safe to say that the 
worrying man cannot sleep too much, and, as a 
rule, he sleeps too little. If he would be cured, 
then, he must attend to this matter. Insomnia may 
well be the efficient cause of worry in his case, and 
to remove the efficient cause is to cure the disease. 
If the doctor's help is necessary it must be obtained. 
There are very few cases of insomnia that cannot 
be relieved. This holds true even if we declare 
that hypnotic drugs are out of place in this con- 
nection. Thus used, they are all false friends, as 
we have already seen. It is worth recognising that 
the overwhelming proportion of cases of insomnia 
— including, of course, those which result in worry 



THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 217 

— are due to simple and easily remediable causes. 
By far the most common of all the physical causes 
of insomnia is indigestion. This may be such as 
to cause scarcely any of the obvious symptoms of 
indigestion; but this is no reason for not making 
certain, in any case of insomnia, that indigestion 
is not its cause. If this cause be looked for, it will 
very often be found; and the mere lightening of 
the last meal of the day, the exclusion of coffee 
after it, or the use of some simple digestive drug 
for a short period, may suffice to relieve the sleep- 
lessness, and thus the mental dispeace which it is 
causing. More vigorous measures may be neces- 
sary in some cases, but, as a rule, the doctor may be 
relied upon, if he is given a fair chance, to cure the 
sleeplessness and thus avert its consequences. 

The qualifying clause is necessary, since it is 
only the few intelligent patients who do give the 
doctor a fair chance in such cases. The men whose 
profession it is to do the difficult work about 
which it is so easy to write, are still hampered by 
the fashion in which patients persistently regard 
their prescriptions as all-important and their advice 
as negligible. Nine times out of ten it is the 
doctor's advice — and this is peculiarly true of in- 
somnia — that matters everything, whilst the pre- 
scription, as likely as not, is a mere placebo — 
something to please the patient, since patients of 
all classes closely resemble those who frequent dis- 
pensaries and the out-patient departments of hos- 
pitals, in that they display a pathetic belief in the 



218 WORRY 

value of the contents of a " bottle/' especially if 
those contents be highly coloured, and vigorously 
assail the senses of smell and taste. But it is not 
by the contents of such bottles that insomnia is 
usually cured; the rather is it by some modifica- 
tion of habits, such as the wise physician is wise 
because he is able to suggest — and fortunate if 
he is able to have his advice acted upon. 

And now we must turn to the theory of the 
matter. Why should sleep relieve worry, and 
insomnia cause it? The answer is that the man 
who sleeps well is, ipso facto, a practical optimist, 
whilst the victim of insomnia is, ipso facto, a prac- 
tical pessimist — a man who worries. And why 
does sleep, or the lack of it, produce such results 
in the sphere of the mind? The answer is to be 
found in the study of the conditions which are 
necessary to what I have elsewhere called sensory, 
organic, or, if you like, gastric optimism. 1 

Sensory or organic optimism I call that which 
is scarcely so much a state of mind as a state of 
the body. It is intimately dependent upon the 
health of the digestion, and is derived from the 
sensations transmitted by the nerves that run to 
the brain from the internal organs. These, in 
health, combine to give us what is called the 
:< organic sense of well-being." In health, then, 
as I have said, " every man has an organic bias 
towards optimism " ; and we must remember that 
the incalculable practical value of organic optim- 

1 See "Evolution the Master-key" (Harper & Bros., 1906). 



THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 219 

ism is in itself an argument for rational optimism 
— the philosophic creed that life brings, on the 
average, a surplus of happiness, and is therefore 
worth living. But what I have called organic 
optimism leads us on to a closer analysis of the 
causes of worry than we have yet attempted. 

Since we are all self-conscious we all look be- 
fore and after; but nevertheless we do not all 
worry in the same degree, nor about similar 
things ; whilst some of us, even without the aid of 
any particular creed, or even without the aid of 
smooth circumstances, scarcely worry at all. 
Wherein does the difference subsist? 

Plainly, if it is not to be found in circumstances, 
it must be found in ourselves. We differ from one 
another, not merely in external configuration, nor 
in intellectual calibre, but also temperamentally 
and emotionally. Our mutual differences in this 
last respect are at least as great as the others. 
Two persons, alike self-conscious, alike called 
upon to face an imminent disaster, look upon it 
with different eyes. Men have long recognised 
this fact, and express it by the image — which is 
in defiance of medical experience, but serves the 
purpose nevertheless — that to the jaundiced eye 
everything is yellow, and by the converse image 
of " rose-tinted spectacles." It is the fact, then, 
that the organic conditions, the nervous organisa- 
tion, that determine our outlook, differ widely in 
different men. This is one of the unappreciated 
commonplaces which superficial people dismiss as 



220 WORRY 

platitudes. There has yet been no adequate study 
of the psychology of temperament from the scien- 
tific standpoint ; and none other serves our purpose. 
Whilst it is true that in virtue of self-consciousness 
and the desire for life and happiness we are all 
predisposed to worry, it is also true that the emo- 
tional nature peculiar to each of us modifies this 
predisposition in an extraordinary degree, height- 
ening it in some and lowering it in others, quite 
independently of external circumstances, the effect 
of which upon the mind must be rigorously dis- 
tinguished from the consequences of the mind's 
own predisposition. 

Now let us consider what we really mean by the 
inherent predisposition of the mind itself. Accord- 
ing to some unscientific systems of thought, such 
an assertion is incapable of any further analysis. 
The mind, according to them, is an indivisible, un- 
analysable substance, its characters depending upon 
nought but the Divine will. The number of people 
who retain this wholly uncritical notion, however, 
is fast diminishing ; and certainly we have no place 
for it here. On the contrary, we have to recognise 
an absolute and complete, if not a necessary con- 
nection between mind and body; whilst, for prac- 
tical purposes and without attempting any deeper 
inquiry, we must regard the mind and its characters 
as conditioned by the state of the body. Practi- 
cally we shall have to recognise the action of the 
mind upon the body, and the action of the body 
upon the mind; but this last phrase is inadequate 



THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 221 

fully to express the truth it suggests. Mental states 
and bodily states are not identical, but yet they are 
inseparable; and our descriptions of them are di- 
verse but complementary ways of expressing the 
same fact. When, therefore, we assert the exist- 
ence of profound emotional or temperamental dif- 
ferences between men, determining in very large 
measure the manner in which they look before and 
after — in which they contemplate the facts of the 
past and the possibilities of the future — we must 
go on to ask ourselves what are the bodily facts by 
which these emotional differences are conditioned. 
" The mind is as deep as the viscera " (the internal 
organs), said Herbert Spencer in the last chapter 
of his priceless autobiography; and we shall soon 
see the practical significance of that saying. 

It means that, whilst we are all predisposed to 
worry, the measure of that predisposition is capa- 
ble of almost indefinite modification by our phys- 
ical health. As that statement stands, it is not 
adequate nor even correct. The question is not 
merely one of health. 

This is evident when we consider the facts of 
two common and terrible diseases — tuberculosis 
of the lungs and general paralysis of the insane. 
In the first of these — - often known as consumption 
or phthisis — the patient's tendency to> look on the 
bright side of things, to expect speedy recovery, 
and to leave all worrying to his friends, is so con- 
spicuous as to have led, long ago, to the coining 
of the term spes phthisica — the phthisical hope — 



222 WORRY 

in order to indicate its characteristic association 
with a disease which, until quite lately, was well- 
nigh hopeless. Whether or not this state of mind 
be explained by the common occurrence of slight 
fever in this disease, at any rate it is a striking 
instance of the manner in which physical disease 
may affect the mental outlook. 

But the case of general paralysis, or " paresis," 
is yet more striking. Here is a disease which, so 
far as we have any record, is invariably fatal, death 
commonly occurring within about two years of the 
first symptoms. The patient rapidly and visibly 
fails in every way, physical and mental. In the 
later stages, he lies in a huddled heap, unable to 
perform the simplest functions, his skin broken by 
the mere pressure of his clothes, no external cir- 
cumstances that can make for happiness present, 
and none that can make for misery wanting. Yet, 
throughout, the patient is happier than any king. 
He cannot worry about anything whatever; his 
peace of mind is alike non-conditioned by, and 
immune to, all exterior circumstances. In the light 
of these and similar facts, we certainly cannot say 
that the measure of a man's predisposition to worry 
is in direct proportion to his departure from the 
standard of bodily health. Never was philosopher 
yet that could endure the toothache patiently; yet 
the general paralytic " suffering " — if that is the 
word — from a disease which is incalculably worse 
than toothache, is more consistently and imperturb- 
ably happy than he ever was in his days of health. 



THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 223 

As I see them, these facts are extremely instruct- 
ive. They do much more than teach us that peace 
of mind is not necessarily correlated with health, 
nor worry with disease. They teach us that there 
may be a pathological, a morbid peace of mind. 
Plainly the mental ease of the patient who is all 
but moribund from general paralysis is morbid. 
But more. What of the mental peace seen in the 
man, suffering from early symptoms of insanity, 
whose affairs are in a desperate state, yet who 
evinces no concern thereat? His peace of mind is 
evidently morbid; he ought to be zuorried. 

I think we have discovered an important — if, 
indeed, an evident — truth : that not all worry 
is morbid. If there are times when not to worry 
is to raise doubts of one's sanity, it is plain that 
there are circumstances in which a judicious worry 
is natural, normal, and right. We must distin- 
guish, then, and not permit ourselves too roundly 
to declare that worry is a disease of the mind, 
since it may be answered that there are times 
when not to worry indicates disease of the mind. 
Hereafter, then, we must invariably distinguish, 
whenever the distinction is as significant as it 
certainly is true, between normal and morbid 
worry. 

I have quoted the two remarkable instances of 
tuberculosis and general paralysis, partly because 
they teach us that worry may be normal or morbid, 
and its absence also, but chiefly because one has 
to recognise facts, and because it would not do 



224 WORRY 

roundly to state that freedom from worry is pro- 
portionate to the bodily health, when such striking 
exceptions are to be found. Nevertheless, when we 
allow their full value to such exceptions as these, 
there does remain a rule which is generally true, 
and which is of the utmost importance in any 
understanding of worry. It is the rule that, in the 
vast majority of all cases, morbid worry and a 
morbid state of body go together, whilst peace of 
mind is associated with bodily health. These prop- 
ositions are so widely true, and so important, that 
it is to be hoped that the reader will not attach 
more than due importance to the exceptions which 
I have felt bound to quote. But this indeed is 
scarcely likely, for, after all, the main fact is a 
commonplace of experience. 

But it is well not only to recognise the fact, but 
also to have a rational understanding of it. And 
this will be easy if we remember what has already 
been said of organic optimism. It was pointed out 
that the organic sense of well-being, to which we 
refer when we speak of " feeling fit," and which 
explains the optimism, the peace of mind, and the 
freedom from morbid worry which are begot of 
good health and of good digestion, depends upon 
the combination in consciousness of the faint sen- 
sations which reach us through the thousands of 
nerve fibres that are distributed to the internal 
organs of the body. Now, in health, the impres- 
sions which these fibres convey to consciousness are 
exceedingly faint. Indeed, as a rule they are rather 



THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 225 

negative than positive. It is only the convalescent, 
in whom the organic sense of well-being is return- 
ing, that is able fully to appreciate it as a positive 
fact, rather than merely the absence or negation 
of discomfort. But though the sensitiveness of 
these nerves is comparatively so slight, they are 
able exquisitely to respond to every kind of dis- 
order that may affect the organs to which they are 
distributed. It would be a great mistake to im- 
agine that this disorder must consist of some grave 
disease before it is able to affect these nerves. The 
very slightest poisoning of the tissues — such, for 
instance, as that consequent upon spending an hour 
or two in a badly ventilated room — is more than 
sufficient in many people to abolish the organic 
sense of well-being, and to produce that state of 
consciousness, misunderstood by itself, which leads 
a man to worry about external things, whereas the 
real cause of his ivorry is within him. 

Now, if we once recognise that even the very 
smallest departure from health may suffice only too 
easily, in virtue of its effect upon the internal 
nerves, to produce the state of consciousness that 
leads to worry, we shall be ready to understand the 
prevalence of the symptom that we are studying. 
If the smallest degree of ill-health, however tem- 
porary or trifling, is sufficient to induce a morbid 
and unjustified worry, then we can understand why 
worry is so widespread; for minor degrees of ill- 
health, in the present state of civilisation, are not 
far short of universal. If there is any one fact in- 

15 



226 WORRY 

sistence upon which would justify this chapter, it is 
this fact that only a very small percentage of the 
population of any city can be regarded as well. 
The main condition predisposing to morbid worry 
is a minor degree of physical ill-health, and such 
ill-health is the rule rather than the exception to- 
day. It is probably safe to assert that of the predis- 
posing causes of morbid worry, none can be named 
for importance beside the minor degrees of ill- 
health, and especially of indigestion, which affect 
such a large proportion of the citizens of any mod- 
ern community. Eminent amongst the physical 
cures of worry, then, will be attention to minor 
degrees of ill-health in every case of worry where 
this state of affairs can be recognised. Chief im- 
portance attaches to disorder of any part of the 
digestive tract, since there is to be found the dis- 
tribution of those nerves upon the proper behaviour 
of which the organic sense of well-being depends. 
This is why I use the phrase gastric optimism, in 
order to indicate the importance of the stomach 
— the mere plebeian stomach — in determining 
the emotional tone of its owner's mind, and decid- 
ing whether he shall be a practical optimist or a 
practical pessimist. 

It follows, for instance, that a man may worry 
because he upsets or overloads his digestive organs 
by eating too much. Now it has lately been proved, 
by the researches of Professor Chittenden, in 
America, that those doctors were right who main- 
tained that the great majority of well-to-do persons 



THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 227 

eat too much ; and here we have an explanation of 
much meaningless and unnecessary worry. 

Again, these facts explain the general relations 
of optimism — practical optimism — with good di- 
gestion, and of pessimism, such as is evidenced in 
much of the writings of Carlyle, with dyspepsia. 
They also afford a testimony to what is in no need 
of further testimony, the supremacy of the reason 
over all its enemies in the case of such thinkers as 
Spencer and Darwin. Both of those men were 
victims to chronic dyspepsia, and yet they were 
optimists. But theirs was a rational optimism, the 
reason defying those internal sensations which, 
in ordinary men, would have inevitably led to 
pessimism. 

Again, these facts explain the inconsistency to 
be found in the writings of many authors who were 
artists rather than thinkers, in whom the reason 
was not supreme, and who had the artistic tem- 
perament, which is ever at the mercy of organic 
sensations, leading to optimistic writing when the 
digestion is in order, or when alcohol has modified 
the organic sensations, and to an equally decided 
pessimism in writings produced when the diges- 
tion is out of order, or during the period of de- 
pression that follows the transient stimulation of 
alcohol. 

The foremost physical cures of worry, then, are, 
in the first place, such measures — varying, of 
course, according to circumstances — as procure 
abundant and normal sleep; and, in the second 



228 WORRY 

place, such measures — similarly various — as 
procure easy, rapid, and complete performance 
of the functions of the digestive tract — the 
influence of which is always dominant in deter- 
mining the presence or absence of that sense of 
organic well-being which is the one physical 
condition that excludes the possibility of morbid 
worry. 

This last statement has already been justified. 
The case of two common and terrible diseases has 
proved that even the gravest ill-health cannot pro- 
duce worry if the conditions are such as to favour 
— in some inexplicable way — the organic sense 
of well-being; and, on the other hand, we have 
only to consider the countless people, in times past 
and in the present, who have believed and believe 
that an enormous proportion of their predecessors 
are suffering eternal torment, but who neverthe- 
less are happy, because the possession of a good 
digestion and the enjoyment of sound sleep make 
worry impossible, even in the presence of such an 
appalling cause for worry. 

Appalling I might well call it, even if I had 
seen only one case of religious melancholia in my 
life. For it is only necessary that some physical 
cause shall interfere with the sense of organic well- 
being, as it does in such cases, for the miserable 
patients to pass days and nights of mental agony 
in contemplation, sometimes of the fate which they 
think to be in store for themselves, sometimes of 
the fate which they fear that others have earned. 



THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 229 

When such a patient is cured, and the organic 
sense of well-being returns, the belief, as a belief, 
persists — but it no longer causes any worry, either 
for self or others. 

Such is the empire of the body over the mind. 



XIX 

PRACTICAL MATERIALISM 

There exists a stupid confusion, which we must 
here avoid from the first, between practical and 
philosophic materialism. The latter term is applied 
to the doctrine that matter is the only reality, mind 
being merely a transient phenomenon produced by 
it. As most people know, this doctrine is essen- 
tially childish, being the philosophy of children and 
of adult persons who have never made the slightest 
inquiry into the nature of knowledge, whilst the 
latest discoveries in physical science have added 
to it the last touch of absurdity. But a man who 
does not interest himself with such matters may 
passively accept the doctrine of philosophic mate- 
rialism, even though the interests of his life are 
wholly spiritual, whilst the follower of Berkeley 
or Hegel, who holds matter to be an illusion, may 
yet be a practical materialist. 

Practical materialism is a constantly besetting 
sin of man. We are all tarred with the same brush, 
readers and writer alike, but beyond a doubt it is 
a specially besetting sin of our own age and of 
great cities. For the majority of us the most 
absorbing interests of life are more or less material, 
and the true criterion of success is one's banker's 



PRACTICAL MATERIALISM 231 

pass-book. We dofhot at present live in one of 
those periods, such as have certainly been, when 
men — probably very similar to ourselves so far 
as inherent characters were concerned — found 
their chief interests in intellectual disputation, in 
the production of works of art, or in other non- 
material ends. Even in Japan, where, until a recent 
date, the craftsman was inspired chiefly by the love 
of beauty and scarcely at all by any consideration 
of the monetary value of his product, we find that 
the aesthetic is yielding to the financial considera- 
tion. On the other hand, the material activities 
of the age are by no means to be deplored in the 
short-sighted fashion exhibited by Ruskin in his 
denunciation of railways. It is necessary for us 
to pass through a period of machinery and grime, 
diminution of cost of production of material things, 
and the simultaneous acceleration of the process. 
With the continuous application of ifenan ingen- 
uity to these material ends, — which, be it remem- 
bered, certainly serve the physical life, and therein 
the necessary condition for the spiritual life, — 
and with a continuance of that diminution in the 
birth-rate which is characteristic of all highly 
developed communities, there must necessarily 
come a time when the physical conditions of life 
are such that ttieir production and maintenance 
need not, as at present they do, occupy the whole, 
or very nearly the whole, of the time and energy 
of all but the very few; and posterity will enter 
into the fruit of our labours. 



232 WORRY 

Meanwhile we have our own lives to live, and 
we are not called upon to sacrifice ourselves for 
future generations. The man who entirely re- 
nounces material ends and produces a noble " tone- 
poem "ora fine picture is as truly serving posterity 
as he who cheapens the cost of the production of 
steel. But the question for us, who are incapable 
of creative art, or even of adding to the heritage 
of imperishable thought which our ancestors have 
bequeathed to us, is this: How in this material 
age may we order our lives so that, whilst on the 
one hand, by our labours, we justify our pl^ce in 
society, on the other hand we make our lives of 
the utmost value to ourselves? 

Every practical materialist is a maker of worry. 
It is a fact of nervous physiology that all physical 
pleasures pall, and that none can confer permanent 
contentment. It is a further fact that, once the 
pursuit of material ends be entered upon, the goal 
is found to recede as we approach it. It is true 
that with spiritual ends the goal or the ideal is ever 
unattainable, but the saying " it is the pursuit that 
we pursue " is infinitely more true of spiritual than 
material ends. The pursuit of mental enrich- 
ment, though certainly not finite, is an end and a 
joy in itself. The pursuit of material enrichment 
can never satisfy and constantly disappoints us. 
Shelley was assuredly right when he spoke of 
" that content surpassing wealth, the sage in medi- 
tation found. " 

Practical materialism with all its lamentable 



PRACTICAL MATERIALISM 233 

consequences, involving not merely atrophy of the 
spiritual life but also the production of envy, 
malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness, is a tend- 
ency to which most men need no urging. This 
fact makes it particularly unfortunate that certain 
great ethical teachers in recent times have urgently 
insisted upon certain doctrines of practical mor- 
ality which directly inculcate practical materialism, 
and therefore defeat the only end of morality — 
which is the ennoblement and enrichment of life. 
We may recognise the half-truth of these teach- 
ings, and thank the writers for their aim, whilst 
wholly repudiating the application of their doc- 
trines in practice. 

These moral doctrines may all be summed up 
in one very simple proposition, Life is for work. 
No sooner is this said than we recognise that for 
not a few amongst us it is entitled to be called a 
u Gospel of work." There are many amongst us, 
men and women, young and old, who find life dull 
and purposeless, who are fretful when they are not 
bored and bored when they are not fretful, and to 
whom life would assume a new aspect if only there 
were set before them some work in which they 
could take an interest. In such cases it is be- 
yond dispute that the cure for worry is work. 
The same applies, as every one knows, to the 
grief aroused by bereavement. The sorrower 
plunges into some active occupation which does 
not leave him a moment to think and insures 
the sound sleep that follows from physical fatigue, 



234 WORRY 

and for him it is certainly a gospel that life is for 
work. 

But it is when we corne to erect this proposition 
into a universal truth that we see its inadequacy. 
Its great preacher was Thomas Carlyle. Curiously 
enough this bitter opponent of utilitarianism was 
also a bitter opponent of art. He had no words 
too strong to express his scorn of those who be- 
lieved in art as an end. "Life is for work/' he 
said. And the counsel is constantly repeated to 
young men and women in our day, without dis- 
crimination between those for whom, as we have 
seen, it is really a gospel, and the vastly larger 
number who find in it merely another encourage- 
ment to the worship of Mammon. 

For the question arises, If life be for work, for 
what is work? The greater part of human work 
at the present day conforms to the type best illus- 
trated by the addition of a column of figures. This 
in itself affords no spiritual nourishment; it does 
not bring happiness ; it is not an end in itself. It 
is only a means to a further end — the proper 
conduct of a business which is justified, why? — 
because it serves human life. No one for a mo- 
ment will question the proposition that work is 
for life. But no one can admit its truth whilst 
continuing to hold, without the most serious quali- 
fications, the proposition that life is for work. If 
life really be for work, as is so very commonly 
taught by those who regard heaven as the ultimate 
reward for that work, what is the meaning and 



PRACTICAL MATERIALISM 235 

purpose of the life hereafter where there is to be 
no work (because there is no need for it) ? 

In short, the ethical basis of practical material- 
ism is fundamentally false. Life is not for work 
but work for life; and life is for happiness. In 
the first place, then, experience proves that practi- 
cal materialism does not achieve its end, and in the 
second place, the ethical basis for that doctrine is 
found to crack under the logical hammer. 

But there is a profound truth embedded, though 
distorted, in this ethical doctrine. It is the truth 
that without activity — a more accurate word than 
work in this connection — life cannot obtain hap- 
piness. Whether or not the activity brings in 
money — that is to say, whether or not it is work 
in the ordinary sense — is a totally irrelevant 
question. The poet who spends an afternoon in 
polishing a stanza, which may never be printed 
and will certainly never be paid for, is finding his 
happiness in activity, and it is a higher happiness 
than he would have obtained by exchanging for 
a cheque verses which, as a poet, he knew to be 
not poetry. Apart from death and disease and 
sins against love, it is surely the chief defect of 
human life at the present day, — it is not a defect 
which has always been, nor yet one which will 
always be — that only the happy few find in their 
work both a means and an end. At the present time 
this ideal is attained only by the thinker, the artist, 
and the inventor, in all their various forms. These 
have, in full degree, the pleasure of creation, which 



236 WORRY 

is, of course, the pleasure of self-expression; psy- 
chologically it is identical, no matter whether the 
product be a novelty in orchestration or an im- 
provement in the internal combustion engine. In 
both cases the accomplishment is a pleasure in itself, 
as well as a fair exchange for material benefits. 
The work is both a means and an end. But for the 
vast majority of men the work itself conforms to 
the type already illustrated. To have added up a 
column of figures correctly affords scarcely more 
satisfaction than is involved in the thought that it 
will not have to be done again. There is some- 
thing terrible in the contemplation of the fact that, 
of the total conscious hours of the vast majority 
of men, the greater proportion is entirely devoted 
to activities which are put forth only because this 
price must be paid in order that the few remaining 
hours per week may really be lived. 

Thus I look forward, as I have said elsewhere, 
to a future type of society which will differ from 
our own almost as light differs from darkness. 
To-day we abuse the prosperous classes for prac- 
tical materialism. Do we realise that practical 
materialism is the necessary and inevitable phi- 
losophy of the unprosperous many? They cannot 
even worship the goddess of getting on. Their 
urgent business from day to day is to keep body 
and soul together, and all the time they are neces- 
sarily losing life in the continued effort to obtain 
the means for life. But I look forward to a type 
of society which, in contrast to the past military 



PRACTICAL MATERIALISM 237 

type and the present military-industrial * and in- 
dustrial types, 2 I will venture to call the spiritual 
type in which, to use the words of Spencer, men 
;i will use the products of industry neither for 
maintaining a militant organisation nor exclusively 
for material aggrandisement, but will devote them 
to the carrying on of higher activities." Indeed, 
we may look even a little further to a time when 
the products of industry will require for their pro- 
duction only a quite insignificant proportion of the 
whole sum of human activities. As I have said, 
" In the spiritual type of society, where material 
wants are easily satisfied, men will be justified in 
devoting large portions of their time to those 
activities with which most of us are now justified 
in filling only the leisure part of life. International 
competition will remain to show itself in a noble 
patriotism, which rejoices — to use the illustration 
suggested by Carlyle — more in our Shakespeare 
than our India. ... To the industrialism of the 
present — which is at present a legitimate means 
to the legitimate end of the fulness of life — there 
will succeed, in the spiritual type of society, a nobler 
industry concerned with the accumulation of riches 
which neither moth nor rust can corrupt, stored 
in the mansions of the mind, where thieves cannot 
break through nor steal." 

But let me remind the reader, ere we leave this 
subject, why I quote these speculations here. It 
is because of the immeasurable difference between 

1 Great Britain, Germany, ? Switzerland. 



238 WORRY 

the relations which these two kinds of activities 
display to worry. Practical materialism not merely 
makes for worry but sometimes it actually goes so 
far as to deify worry. This lamentable end can be 
attained by slow degrees through stages which, if 
they went no further, would be perfectly defensible. 
A young man is told that he must take his work 
more seriously; he does not care enough. If he 
never worries about his work he will never do any 
good work. How can he expect to get on if he 
is more interested in poetry than in ledgers; and, 
of course, how can he expect to be happy if he does 
not get on ? Indeed, the prophets of practical mate- 
rialism sometimes seem to take a hint from the 
theologians of a passing day in endeavouring to 
inculcate a kind of feeling about the duty of " car- 
ing," almost if not quite analogous to the feeling 
of the " sinfulness of sin." 

On the other hand, the man who finds his chief 
pleasures in non-material ends has an incalculable 
advantage in respect of worry. No better illustra- 
tion of the difference can be found than in the 
relatively trivial sphere of sport, where it fully 
obtains. The occupations of life in an ideal world 
should one and all be like the game which one plays 
for the sake of the game. I sit down to play chess 
with a friend, or I stand up to my old friend and 
enemy at the wickets, and I mean to have the best 
of it. If I do, well and good; if not, perhaps it 
was his turn, and it may be mine again next time. 
In any case, the game was worth playing. I play 



PRACTICAL MATERIALISM 239 

to win, but if I am beaten I am not sorry that I 
played at all. But suppose that I make my living 
by playing chess, and that the adequacy of my in- 
come depends upon my winning prizes of a certain 
value at certain tournaments. Obviously the whole 
aspect of the game is transformed. Now I can no 
longer afford to lose; now I would as soon take 
the prize, if I could, without playing for it. I am 
no longer playing " a friendly " ; one cannot afford 
to be friendly when the struggle for existence is in 
process. 

But in the ideal world, which is by no means 
impossible of realisation, all our games and all our 
work will be " friendlies." There will always 
remain glory to fight for, and there will always be 
those who worry at failing to obtain glory; but 
this is not the worry that kills or scars except in 
the case of very few. I need not illustrate my 
meaning further, for all my readers are familiar 
with the poem in which Mr. Rudyard Kipling has 
expressed this idea. 

In our last chapter we shall see reason to believe 
that practical materialism is essentially irreligious, 
for it involves a denial of the doctrine that the 
good is imperishable. 



XX 

RELIGIOUS WORRY 

The relations of worry and religion in general 
are manifold and remarkable. If we survey the 
whole field of religion so far as is possible, includ- 
ing not only the great modern religions in their 
many forms but primitive religions, and including 
the true and the false in each, we find that there 
are three distinct relations for us to consider. The 
first is that in certain of its forms — forms which, 
in these days, men are coming to regard as false 
and morbid — religion is and has been a cause of 
worry. The importance of this subject is daily 
diminishing, as I shall hope to show. Secondly, 
we find that a great proportion of the beliefs and 
practices of men, coming under the general head 
of religion, may be regarded as consequences of 
worry. It may fairly be said, I think, that most 
religions show signs of having been produced in 
order to relieve and avert worry. I am using the 
word in its large sense to include fretting, fear of 
the future, fear of great natural phenomena, such 
as thunder and earthquakes, and fear of death. 
With these may also be included many other forms 
of dis-ease 1 of mind which are closely allied to 

1 Disease, of course, is properly dis-ease. 



RELIGIOUS WORRY 241 

worry and which certain kinds of religion in all 
ages have sought to alleviate. Thirdly, it is certain 
beyond certainty that true religion is a cure of 
worry, a preventive of worry, and utterly incom- 
parable in its power of performing these functions. 

To attempt to compass this great field in a single 
chapter would be most foolishly to underestimate 
its importance and its extent. I purpose here 
merely to deal with the first of the three relations 
which I have indicated. My subject, therefore, is 
Religious Worry. 

It is necessary for each man to speak what he 
believes, trusting surely that truth is great and will 
prevail. 1 That I yield to none in my reverence for 
true religion is already known to my readers ; but 
this reverence is accompanied, as it is in all who 
share it, by an utter abomination of the falsities 
which have injured religion so abundantly in time 
past — though their day of reckoning is now 7 at 

1 Says Herbert Spencer in one of his noblest passages: — 
" Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest 
truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may 
reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of 
view. ... It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies 
with some principles and repugnance to others. He with all his 
capacities and aspirations and beliefs is not an accident but a 
product of the time. While he is a descendant of the past, he is 
a parent of the future and his thoughts are as children born to him, 
which he may not carelessly let die. . . . Not as adventitious there- 
fore will the wise man regard the faith which is in him. The 
highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter : knowing that let what 
come of it he is thus playing his right part in the world." I quote 
these words not in the vain belief that what I have to say is worthy 
of them, but because they consummately express one of the necessary 
principles of all progress. 

16 



242 WORRY 

hand. I write these words in the belief that they 
will protect me from the untrue charge of hos- 
tility to that which I revere, and the supreme value 
of which I shall endeavour to indicate before our 
study has come to an end. 

The varieties of religious worry may thus per- 
haps be summarised: worry as a product of the 
religious conscience; worry about past sin, about 
present sinfulness, and about " the sinfulness of 
sin " ; the fear of hell — which in these days more 
commonly takes the form of a vague apprehension 
of future retribution; fear of the evil one; and 
the fear of death. Whether for well or for ill it 
is certain that each of these forms of religious 
worry now plays an almost incredibly less part in 
human life than was formerly the case. This 
is not merely the opinion of one who welcomes 
the fact, but is published and bewailed by many 
leading ecclesiastics of a certain type at the 
present time. There is no question, either, as 
to the historical evidence. The first instance 
that springs to mind is, of course, Buckle's fa- 
mous and appalling chapter upon the sermons 
preached in Scotland during the seventeenth cen- 
tury. There yet remains a work to be written 
by some philosophic and erudite historian con- 
cerning religious worry, its origin and history, 
its power in individual life, and as a factor in 
human history. Here, however, we can attempt 
merely to consider religious worry as a fact of 
our own times. 



RELIGIOUS WORRY 243 

The past being unalterable, it is evident that 
retrospective zvorry is absolutely futile; it is more 
than evident, indeed, — consciously or subcon- 
sciously it is realised by all of us, and one is 
almost inclined to doubt whether there ever was 
or is any retrospective worrying not really de- 
pendent upon anticipation of the future. If it 
be absolutely certain that a past event, however 
distressing or however unworthy, is utterly im- 
potent to affect the future, either in this life or 
in any other, no one, I believe (save possibly in 
certain cases of insanity), will w T orry about it. 
Hence I take it that retrospective worry must 
always depend — as it certainly does in the actual 
victim of the disease known as religious mania — 
upon the belief that that which is worried about 
may or must work to the future detriment of 
the individual. Almost all retrospective worry 
depends upon the possibility of future punish- 
ment, of future untoward consequence. I will 
not utter such a libel as to say that a murderer 
cannot be conceived to worry over his deed 
even though he is absolutely certain that it will 
never be revealed in a human or divine assize. 
The last cry of his victim might well haunt 
such a man though no punishment were to be 
feared. But, in general, retrospective worry, I 
maintain, does depend upon the fear of future 
consequence. 

This has ever been a potent weapon of the un- 
worthy ecclesiastics of all churches and religions. 



2U WORRY 

I believe that the normal tendency of a healthy- 
man or woman, unmodified by dogmas, in the con- 
sciousness of past wrong-doing, is a tendency to 
forget, to " let byegones be byegones." I believe 
not only the healthy but the natural attitude to be : 
" It cannot now be undone, no purpose can be 
served in thinking about it, I must try harder to 
live more nobly in the future." I do not say that 
these propositions are always formulated, but they 
represent the subconscious attitude of the natural 
healthy man. 

Never yet was the priest, however, of any eccle- 
siastical system, ancient or modern, who could 
afford to permit wrong-doing such oblivion. On 
the contrary, it has ever been the priest's business 
to insist and to expatiate upon past wrong-doing, 
to preach its awful though yet unrealised conse- 
quences, to teach that the heart of man is desper- 
ately wicked in its tendency to forget, and that 
something must be done. There is no more fatal 
error, says the priest, than to imagine that past 
wrong-doing can ever safely be forgotten; on the 
contrary, there is an approaching time when the 
secrets of all hearts shall be opened. You would 
like to forget and make a fresh start ; but you 
must not forget. If you do you will only earn a 
terrible reminder. Your only chance lies in the 
full realisation of the depth of your wickedness 
and the immediate adoption — " to-morrow may be 
too late " — of measures of sacrifice or penitence 
or payment of some kind. " Know thou that 



RELIGIOUS WORRY 245 

for all these things God will bring thee into 
judgment/' * 

Now certainly no student of science is prepared 
to deny the truth of the doctrine of eternal con- 
sequence. But also there is no student of science 
who does not believe that there exists a necessary 
proportion between consequence and cause. Thus, 
though we are bound to admit that in a very true 
sense the past is never dead, since it was the 
parent of the present and the future was in its 
womb, we are by no means prepared to admit, in- 
deed we totally deny, that the chain of events is 
constituted as some officials of all religions, ancient 
and modern, would have us believe. In these pres- 
ent days, when scientific ideas are beginning to 
dominate men's thoughts, it is highly necessary 
for the upholders of the old order to show, if pos- 
sible, that their doctrines are in entire consonance 
with scientific teaching. Thus we are assured that 
the theological doctrine of retribution is proved 
and demonstrated by the scientific doctrine of con- 
sequence. On the contrary, I am prepared to assert 
that the theological doctrine constitutes a denial 
of the scientific doctrine. We students of science 
believe in the unending power of the past, but 
exactly because we believe in the continuity of 
nature, we believe that its consequences will be 
demonstrated in the natural order. But observe 

1 Ecclesiastes, Chap, xi : 9. This is quoted from the Old Testa- 
ment, be it remembered, not from the New Testament, with its 
message of forgiveness and peace and consolation. 



246 WORRY 

what is the real gist of the theological doctrine. 
It is a denial of natural consequence. Natural 
consequence asserts that the past wrong-doing is 
potent in proportion to the part it played in the 
natural course of events. The natural man has 
an unformulated belief in the continuity of nature 
in certain cases, at any rate. If the wrong was a 
slight one, — if, for instance, it was no more than 
a wrong thought or a wrong but unrealised inten- 
tion, — the natural man is inclined to the opinion 
that it is not worth worrying about; its potency 
in the natural order is so insignificant. So far as 
any scientific doctrine is concerned, the natural man 
is right. If now the ecclesiastic steps in with the 
assertion that unless forgiveness is earned for that 
wrong thought, whether by sacrifice or penitence 
or confession or money down, 1 the most disastrous 
consequences will ensue, he is at liberty to prove 
his case if he can, but he is certainly not at liberty 
to invoke the aid of science. Science believes in 
eternal natural consequence, and that belief in- 
volves a denial of the doctrine of unnatural conse- 
quence. Science, for instance, cannot comprehend 
the doctrine of those theologians — now, happily, 
almost extinct — who used to assert that it is 
possible to gain a spiritual paradise by a death- 
bed repentance after years of villainy. It seems to 
science that villainy brings its own necessary con- 
sequences in moral if not physical degradation, 

1 Money down is at the root of all this evil in the case of many 
savage and primitive religions. 



RELIGIOUS WORRY 247 

and that these consequences are as inevitable as 
are any other evidences of the working of natural 
law. Science believes that vice, like virtue, is its 
own reward. If the old theological doctrine be 
sound, the scientific doctrine of consequence is a 
myth. 

I submit, then, that retrospective religious worry 
is not a natural consequence of the natural consti- 
tution of man's mind, but is an artificial and facti- 
tious evil which depends upon dogmas that are 
not only without scientific support but run directly 
counter to the most assured and important of all 
scientific generalisations — that causation is uni- 
versal and reasonable. 

It may be admitted that persons of a certain 
temperament are liable to brood over the past, and 
to feel that their present happiness is prejudiced 
by their memory of certain events which may, in- 
deed, have gone for ever, but which cannot be for- 
gotten or ignored. Looking at the matter in cold 
blood, these people may admit that such and such 
an event has no direct influence that is appreciable 
in the present; but, nevertheless, the memory of 
it darkens their present lives, and will not be 
ignored. The object of their worry may have had 
no relation to any doings of their own, and the 
question of future punishment or retribution is not 
raised. In such cases my proposition that the 
greater part of retrospective worry depends upon 
religious doctrines is plainly inapplicable. Their 
only remedies are common-sense and new, worthy, 



248 WORRY 

and powerful mental interests. Yet I do not be- 
lieve that such cases represent anything but a very 
small proportion of retrospective worry, the greater 
part of which depends, I hold, upon a false religious 
doctrine, and is to be remedied by the establish- 
ment in its place of beliefs that are true, and 
healthy, and little dependent upon mere self-inter- 
est. Retrospective worry is almost always selfish: 
scarcely any one worries about another's past. 

This is a truth of the greatest importance, for 
if men once realised that religious worry is essen- 
tially selfish, they would begin to cast doubt upon 
its title to be regarded as religious at all. " Love 
is the fulfilling of the law," and not concern for 
setf. We are all familiar with George Eliot's sar- 
castic phrase " other-worldliness." This is often 
absurdly misquoted and misinterpreted to mean the 
renunciation of material joys for spiritual blessed- 
ness hereafter, but that is very far from being 
what she meant. By other-worldliness she meant 
something that can be distinguished only by its 
locale from worldliness ; the difference being merely 
that instead of keeping an eye on the main chance 
before death the other-worldling looks a little fur- 
ther ahead. But this positive form of anxiety 
about enjoyment of the next world is less defi- 
nitely associated with worry than the negative form 
which fears post-mortem disaster. It is distinctive 
of the present age, as Cardinal Manning once 
observed, that the locale of worry is being very 
definitely moved from the after life to the present. 



RELIGIOUS WORRY 249 

It was to this change of outlook, which he much 
regretted, that the Cardinal attributed the much 
greater attention paid in these days to the possi- 
bility of improving the conditions of human life 
on this present earth. But it is somewhat difficult 
to regret any change of opinion which, for in- 
stance, no longer permits the rich to survey unper- 
turbed the preventable miseries of the poor — on 
the ground that there will be compensation here- 
after — but, on the contrary, stirs men's con- 
sciences to ask whether, in the presence of human 
misery, they have not a duty here and now. 

But it is in the fear of death that all forms of 
religious worry find their most terrible and com- 
plete expression; nor does the decline of religious 
worry in general imply, so far as one can judge, a 
corresponding decline in the fear of death amongst 
Western peoples. The Oriental, as every one 
knows, knows no such fear — a fact worthy of 
much pondering, since it leads the serious student 
to ask whether the difference is one of inborn 
temperament or one of education and training. I 
propose, then, to devote the rest of my space to 
a study of this fear of death, well knowing that it 
is possible to refute without reservation the greater 
portion of common belief on this subject. 

Human worry depends upon the presence, in 
every living thing, of the " will to life " — the 
desire for life and happiness. This universal prop- 
osition is not invalidated by the facts of suicide, 



250 WORRY 

as will be seen if we carefully include the idea 
of happiness in the proposition. Life, as such, is 
not the object of desire, but life for what of hap- 
piness it brings or may bring. And since, in the 
overwhelming majority of cases, life is thought to 
imply sufficient happiness, or the possibility of suf- 
ficient happiness, to be worth while, we may here 
take it that, practically speaking, since life is the 
object of desire, the greatest and most necessary 
object of worry and fear is death. The fear of 
death is thus of the very essence of worry, exhibit- 
ing it in its most cogent and universal and appar- 
ently — to Occidental people — inevitable form. 
By the fear of death I mean in the first place to 
indicate neither " the dread of something after 
death" nor the love of life; but the fear which 
has given rise to such a term as " death-agony." 
It is commonly believed that the act of dying is 
a painful one, attended with a cup of mortal bit- 
terness such as can be drained by no man twice. 
Death is the King of Terrors. I here summarily 
deny the truth of this belief. 

In the first place I would have the reader take 
the word of one who has witnessed many and 
various deaths, that the term " death-agony " does 
not correspond to any fact. The immediate cause 
of death, in all but very exceptional cases, such as 
accident, is the poisoning of the nervous centres 
by carbonic acid, which accumulates in the blood 
owing to the failure of the arrangements for its 
removal. This gas, let us mark, is an anaesthetic, 



RELIGIOUS WORRY 251 

and has indeed been employed as such, both locally 
and otherwise. This property of carbonic acid 
may be termed, without any philosophic criticism 
of the assumptions implied in the words, " a merci- 
ful provision of Nature." Normal death, if the 
phrase be permitted, is a painless occurrence, 
usually preceded by gradual loss of consciousness, 
entailing no more suffering than going to sleep, 
which it most closely resembles, literally as well as 
poetically. The accumulation of this merciful gas 
often induces muscular contractions or spasms, 
which are preceded by loss of consciousness, but 
which may have suggested to uncritical observers 
that their moribund subject was in " agony." It 
is not merely that the pain of death is trifling as 
compared with the physical pain of a scald; it is 
non-existent. To this general assertion there are 
very rare exceptions, as in the case of the agonis- 
ing death by strychnine poisoning, in which the 
mind is clear almost to the last. 

But before dismissing the simple question of 
physical pain, we may note the existence of the 
unexamined idea that an instantaneous death 
has something specially horrible and fearful 
about it. 

Numerous and well-devised psychological experi- 
ments, supported by the testimony of thousands 
of cases in battle and elsewhere, have conclusively 
proved that in death by bullet or bomb the pos- 
sibility of consciousness is annihilated before the 
consciousness either of pain or of imminent dis- 



252 WORRY 

aster can be aroused. The interval of time neces- 
sary to develop the feeling of pain is appreciable 
and measurable by psychologists. The entry of a 
directly lethal bullet into the brain causes death in 
a shorter period than avails for any alteration of 
consciousness. Death in this form assumes its 
least painful shape. Obviously I speak of only one 
point of view. I do not refer to the need for 
preparation implied in the Churchman's petition to 
be delivered from " sudden death." 

In confirmation of my statements, let me quote 
from Professor Osier of Oxford. His remarks 
bear both upon the physical pain of death and 
upon its mental phenomena, but I propose sharply 
to distinguish between the two. He says: 

" As a rule, man dies as he had lived, uninfluenced 
practically by the thought of a future life. Bunyan 
could not understand the quiet, easy death of Mr. 
Badman, and took it as an incontestable sign of his 
damnation. The ideal death of Cornelius, so beauti- 
fully described by Erasmus, is rarely seen. In our 
modern life the educated man dies usually as did 
Mr. Denner in Margaret Deland's story — wonder- 
ing, but uncertain, generally unconscious and uncon- 
cerned. I have careful records of about five hundred 
death-beds, studied particularly with reference to the 
modes of death, and the sensations of the dying. 
The latter alone concern us here. Ninety suffered 
bodily pain or distress of one sort or another, eleven 
showed mental apprehension, two positive terror, one 
expressed spiritual exultation, one bitter remorse. 
The great majority gave no sign one way or the 
other ; like their birth, their death was ' a sleep and 
a forgetting.' The Preacher was right : in this matter 



RELIGIOUS WORRY 253 

man ' hath no pre-eminence above the beast ' — 'as 
the one dieth, so dieth the other.' " 1 

Attending first to the question of physical pain, 
we see that rather more than one in six of the 
cases recorded by Professor Osier suffered physical 
pain or distress. Appropriate drugs would have 
relieved these symptoms, though perhaps not with- 
out risk of shortening life. But the quotation is 
by no means incompatible with the more unquali- 
fied statement I have already made regarding the 
pain of death. For the pain and distress recorded 
in a proportion of Professor Osier's cases were 
not, the reader may be assured, related in any way 
to the act of dying, nor were they experienced in 
articulo mortis. They were just such pain and 
distress as the patient would have experienced even 
were he not about to die — and no worse. In 
none of these cases did Nature's anaesthetic fail 
at the last. 

The physical pain of Death itself, then, is a 
myth, and there is no such thing as " death-agony." 
I have already hinted at one partial explanation of 
the horrible delusion which has distressed so many 
myriads of our kind. But I fear that the wide- 
spread belief in the agony of death does not mainly 
depend upon the erroneous inferences of watchers 
beside a death-bed. Indeed, such watchers, how- 
ever uncritical, are usually well aware of what is 
indeed evident, that the dying man is not the sub- 

1 Ecclesiastes iii, 19. 



254 WORRY 

ject of any agony. We have to attribute this dis- 
tressing fiction largely to the base imitations of 
true religion. But it can only be a false religion 
that needs falsities for its support, and it is not 
necessary for us to condemn dogmas which humane 
and thoughtful people are now incapable of hold- 
ing. The pain of death has long been an object 
of human worry; but there is no such pain; and 
thus I am able to give the surely excellent counsel 
— Fear no longer the non-existent. Would that 
all worry could be so disposed of! No cure for 
worry can approach the demonstration that there 
is nothing whereat to worry: it is worth a thou- 
sand of the method which seeks to show that worry 
is futile — which we all know. When we consider 
Christian Science we may appreciate the potency 
of the cure for worry which denies the existence 
of worry's object. That, at any rate, is open to 
me, in the case of the worry which is concerned 
with the physical pain of death. 

Let us now pass on to consider a much more 
difficult and important question — the moral fear 
of death. It is, of course, obvious that this can 
exist only in a self-conscious being ; it is for those 
who look before and after that the King has terrors. 

No better illustration of this moral fear can be 
found than in Sir Edward Elgar's inspired setting 
of Cardinal Newman's " Dream of Gerontius." 
Here the theme is death, the protagonist a dying 
man. I know no demonstration of the fear of 
death so poignant as Elgar's setting of this hor- 



RELIGIOUS WORRY 255 

rible poem. The Cardinal's conception of the 
ghastly visions of the dying man, when reinforced 
by the power of composer and executant, is an 
overwhelming and must surely be a perdurable and 
final illustration of the influence of certain reli- 
gious beliefs upon the minds of those who accept 
them. Here, indeed, in the death of a pious and 
fortified believer, is the veritable death-agony, the 
moral-agony — immeasurably worse than any phys- 
ical agony — of what Newman may be presumed 
to have regarded as the orthodox death-bed. Be- 
side this death of Gerontius, which I should like 
to hope is but the morbid imagining of an abnor- 
mal mind, without counterpart in human experi- 
ence, the most fabulous tales of the horrors of the 
' infidel death-bed " seem anaemic and trivial. In- 
deed, they are mythical ex hypothesi, for only the 
believer in future retribution can fear to die, much 
though he may love to live or may sorrow for his 
beloved ones' bereavement. 

The fear of death, then, may thus be briefly 
analysed. In so far as it is a physical fear, it is 
baseless; the only peaceful and painless part of a 
fatal illness may be its termination. 

In so far as it is a moral fear, it is conditioned 
by the mental power of anticipation. 1 It follows 
that there is no horror in the contemplation of 
the countless millions of deaths that preceded the 

1 " Cowards die many times before their deaths ; 
The valiant never taste of death but once." 

— Julius Caesar, ii, 2. 



256 WORRY 

advent of man upon the earth, or those of the 
lower animals to-day. The death of a rose or a 
kitten may be sad, but neither is horrible. 

Nor is it horrible " to cease upon the midnight 
with no pain." The fear of death, as death, is 
due only when it is believed that thereafter may 
or must be unhappiness — whether conditioned by 
the worm that dieth not, or by eternal alienation 
from the Deity. 

I conclude that the fear of death is in full de- 
cline. The genius of that most illustrious priest 
Copernicus, nearly four centuries ago, dealt it a 
terrible blow, by destroying the geography of the 
Dantean Inferno. Since he made it impossible to 
believe that hell is a place, it must be concluded 
that it is a state. According to Petronius Arbiter 
" it was fear first made the gods " — Primus in 
orbe deos fecit timor, and it was assuredly the 
vague fear so characteristic of early human think- 
ing which has made that great cause for fear 
which we now see to be nothing but the baseless 
fabric of a nightmare. That nightmare has passed, 
never to return; nor need the most orthodox be- 
liever hesitate to accept the biblical word that " His 
mercy endureth for ever." The religion of the 
future will be no longer a cause of worry and fear 
and agony of soul, but their supreme and final 
conqueror. 



XXI 

WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 

At the very moment that we begin to study the 
beginnings of religion in the remote past of man- 
kind, we discover a fact which is of extraordinary 
significance to us. This fact, now well attested by 
anthropological research in many fields, was dis- 
cerned by the happy insight of certain writers, long 
before anthropology, as we now know it, had come 
into being. The old Roman writer, Petronius Ar- 
biter, declared that " Fear first made the gods " — 
Primus in orbe deos fecit timor: whilst we find it 
stated in the " Leviathan " of Hobbes, that " the 
feare of things invisible is the naturall Seed of 
Religion." As Mr. Edward Clodd says in his 
admirable little book upon Animism, 1 " In the 
degree that anything is unknown, it remains a 
source of dread, and therefore of evil, since from 
' feare of the invisible ' spring the feelings of in- 
feriority, helplessness, and dependence which man's 
surroundings quicken, and which are the raw mate- 
rials of theologies and rituals." 

As has been remarked elsewhere, it is only the 
self-conscious creature that is religious : a dog has 

1 " Animism, the Seed of Religion," in the series, Religions, 
Ancient and Modern; Constable, 1905. 

17 



258 WORRY 

no use for a religion ; man is not only " a religious 
animal/' but the only religious animal. Now, in 
studying the relations of worry and religion — the 
word " worry " being used in the wider sense — 
we make the capital discovery that worry about the 
unknown, the mysterious, the uncontrollable, is the 
prime cause of all primitive religions. The self- 
conscious creature is able to look before, able to 
project himself into the future, even if, in early 
stages, it be only into to-morrow, and the prospect 
breeds within him certain emotions of apprehen- 
sion, fear, or worry, from which spring religious 
systems. The counsel to " Take no thought for 
the morrow, sufficient unto the day is the evil 
thereof," can never be followed, even if it ought to 
be followed, by human beings, who are truly human 
not in virtue of the erect attitude, the opposable 
thumb, or the large cerebrum, but in virtue of self- 
consciousness. 

Let us briefly consider the outlook of primitive 
man. Volumes of nonsense have been written 
about the happy, careless, unsophisticated life of 
the " child of Nature," — the primitive, virtuous 
savage, living " an plein air/ 9 the firmament his 
ceiling, the stars his night-lights, his virtue his 
only garment. It is argued that it is folly to be 
wise — ignorance is your true bliss. The happy 
savage has simple and easily satisfied wants, he 
does not suffer from ennui, which is peculiar to 
highly developed minds — a dog is never bored, 
nor a rustic — and he lives in happy communion 



WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 259 

with his mother, Nature, who readily and gra- 
ciously supplies his simple and honest needs. The 
true " fall of man," we are told, was the fall from 
this " state of Nature," to the state of civilisation, 
sophistication, and vice. 

All such doctrines, however, belong to a pre- 
scientific age; they may most succinctly and 
accurately be described as " tommy-rot " — " non- 
sense," a purely negative term, is too good for 
them. When we come to study the psychology of 
primitive man, — or of the primitive men who are 
to be found in abundance amongst ourselves to-day, 
though clothed as to the body, and veneered as to 
the mind, — we discover that ignorance is not bliss. 
On the contrary, wherever there is ignorance there 
is superstition. A primal law of the mind was for- 
gotten by those who maintained that ignorance is 
bliss, and that the ignorant savage was therefore 
happy and enviable. Ignorance is literally not- 
knowing-ness: but it implies a most ridiculous 
lack of observation to suppose that a man who 
is ignorant of any matter therefore holds no 
beliefs on the subject. On the contrary, it is all 
but a necessity of the mind that a man must 
believe something: and superstition is the creed 
of ignorance. 

In late years, here a professional philosopher, 
and there a wise man without such pretensions, 
have been able to acquire that ability to suspend 
judgment which, as Huxley remarked, is charac- 
teristic only of the trained mind. These cases, 



260 WORRY 

however, are novel and exceptional, and may be 
entirely left out of account here. 

The truth, then, is that ignorance is not a neutral 
state, but involves something positive; in general, 
not to know the truth is to believe what is false, 
and that is superstition. If you cannot catch a 
savage and observe him, live with a child and learn 
there how the mind of man develops. 

If, then, we take a general view of superstition, 
expressing itself in the beginnings of the countless 
false religions which have played their malign part 
in the history of mankind, we discover that its 
prime cause is the emotional state called worry or 
fear, and that the superstition, whatever its par- 
ticular form may be, is invented in order, so far as 
possible, to alleviate these fears by the invention 
of some method which, if practised, will make them 
unnecessary. We find little enough in primitive 
religion of anything that can be called morality. 
Most if not all primitive religions are rather im- 
moral than moral, and morality, of course, is aeons 
older than any religion, for motherhood is aeons 
older than man, who is, indeed, its greatest prod- 
uct. Thus the worry of the savage is not worry 
about sin or the sinfulness of sin; it is not indeed 
religious worry, as I have used that term in another 
chapter. Religion has not yet reached the stage at 
which it begins to create new causes for worry. 
The fear of the savage is not retrospective but an- 
ticipative. He lives in a constant state of uncer- 
tainty, never knowing what may happen to him 



WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 261 

next. Every natural phenomenon of any magni- 
tude is a source of alarm to him; lightning and 
thunder, storms and clouds, eclipses, shooting stars, 
even permanent phenomena such as rocks, moun- 
tains, trees, and rivers, — all these constitute for 
him sources of fear. It is, perhaps, not themselves 
that he fears, so much as the personal, maleficent 
forces which he conceives to be behind them. There 
is very positive evidence which leads us to believe 
that for a long period in the history of man the 
religion of fear was the only religion he knew. 

New and greater terrors were added to primitive 
life when ancestor-worship was invented. Says 
Mr. Clodd, " The belief in spirits and in their sur- 
vival after death is shown to have sufficing cause 
of origin in dreams about them, and to be strength- 
ened by the phenomena of shadows, reflections, and 
echoes, and by sundry kinds of disease, all of 
which, like death itself, are attributed to maleficent 
agents, theories of natural causes being impossible 
to the savage mind." It would be entirely erro- 
neous for us to conceive of primitive ancestor- 
worship as the expression of a beautiful reverence 
and affection for the departed. Ancestor-worship, 
on the contrary, was a product of worry or fear. 
There was reason to believe, the savage thought, 
that the spirits of the dead retain an interest in the 
affairs of the living, and are able to exact from the 
living a terrible tribute unless their wishes are 
regarded. Thus began that appalling sacrifice of 
the living to the dead which, in its thousand forms, 



262 WORRY 

material and spiritual, is one of the few most salient 
facts in the history of mankind. 

Hence it comes about that the " feare of things 
invisible " is invested with a new and more terrible 
object. For things invisible do not now merely 
consist of non-human powers, resident in lightning 
or in rock, but consist of disembodied human spirits 
which have a far greater interest in the affairs of 
men, and which may reasonably be expected to 
exert far greater powers. The chief who was a 
mighty warrior in his lifetime, punishing the slight- 
est disobedience with death, is far more to be 
feared now that he himself, whilst still retaining 
his love of power, has assumed a form which is 
not merely invisible, — so that it is impossible to 
be certain that the smallest and most secret act is 
not observed, — but is also invulnerable, immune 
alike to dagger or poison. Only those who interest 
themselves in the close and detailed study of savage 
ways of thought can realise how potent, how con- 
stantly present, and how disabling is the " feare of 
things invisible " when these come to include the 
ghosts of the departed. 

This fear, then, breeds the religion called ances- 
tor-worship. The use of the word " ancestor " is 
misleading, for it suggests ancestor-worship as we 
see it in the teachings of Confucius and in the con- 
temporary practice of the Chinese. But this, which 
has many beautiful aspects, is a relatively modern 
transfiguration and limitation of primitive ances- 
tor-worship. It would be better to use the phrase 



WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 263 

" the worship of the dead/' and the point on which 
I desire to insist is this, — that the worship of the 
dead is a product of the fear of the dead. We, who 
regard our dead with feelings of affection and 
regret, may find it difficult to realise the character 
of the emotions from which the worship of the dead 
originally sprang, but it is easy for me to produce 
abundant authorities which prove that I am justi- 
fied in ascribing to worry or fear the prime cause 
of this most important ingredient of religious be- 
liefs. I will content myself by quoting the conclu- 
sion reached by Dr. J. G. Frazer, the author of 
" The Golden Bough," who is incomparably the 
greatest living student of early religion. He says 
that " the attentions bestowed on the dead sprang 
not so much from the affections as from the fears 
of the survivors. For, as every one knows, ghosts 
of the unburied dead haunt the earth, and make 
themselves exceedingly disagreeable, especially to 
their undutiful relatives." " Ask the negro," says 
Paul du Chaillu, " where is the spirit of his great- 
grandfather, he says he does not know, it is done. 
Ask him about the spirits of his father or brother 
who died yesterday; then he is full of fear and 
terror." * 

Primitive religion and primitive superstition are, 
of course, one and the same, and we have to re- 
member that the primitive character of a religion 
is not dependent upon the particular century or 
epoch in which it flourishes. The religion of a 

1 For these quotations I am again indebted to Mr. Clodd. 



264 WORRY 

primitive or undeveloped mind will assuredly be 
a primitive religion even though it be held by a 
man of Anglo-Saxon blood in London or in Boston 
in the year 1907. Now just as it has been easy to 
show that worry played a great part in the causa- 
tion of primitive religious superstitions, which 
were organised into the religious systems of Red 
Indians, Melanesians, Negroes, or Maoris, thus 
affording historical warrant for the title of this 
chapter — so it is only too easy to show that even 
in our own day in countless instances, worry and 
fear operating upon the minds of the ignorant and 
uneducated, produce in them by far the greater 
part of their religion. There is a pathetic belief 
abroad that if a professor of natural philosophy in 
a Protestant theological college and an illiterate 
senile Irishwoman both call themselves Christians, 
their respective religions are one and the same. 
This is only one more instance of the fashion in 
which we are deceived by words. As George Mer- 
edith somewhere says, " naming saves a lot of 
thinking/' and it is true in this case. If we pierce 
below the common name we find differences of 
belief and practice so vast that we realise the name 
to be nothing less than false. The superstitions 
typical of primitive religion flourish to-day amongst 
the ignorant in forms which can be immediately 
recognised as absolutely identical in origin and all 
but identical in detail. It is true that the holder of 
these beliefs may be known as an Episcopalian or 
a Roman Catholic or an Esoteric Buddhist or a 



WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 265 

Christian Scientist or a Calvinist. Ignorant people 
of lowly mental stature are to be found included 
under all these names, and the lower the type of 
mind the smaller are the differences exhibited in 
different specimens of it. Difference of opinion 
can only exist where there is high mental develop- 
ment. Primitive folk all think alike and all think 
wrong. 

Surveying, then, the whole field of contemporary 
religions, and ignoring the fact that exponents of 
Creed No. i constantly expatiate upon the funda- 
mental differences which separate them from the 
exponents of Creed No. 14 or 23, we may make 
bold to draw a line which divides us all in an en- 
tirely new direction. The obvious but superficial 
manner of classifying mankind, so far as religion 
is concerned, would be in a series of columns, each 
headed by the name of a particular religion, such 
as Mohammedanism or Buddhism. The adher- 
ents of each cult might then be arranged in order 
of social status, education, or the like. But sup- 
pose that we had them arranged in order of mental 
development; then the critical student would be 
inclined to pay very scant attention to the vertical 
division into columns and to make a new division 
by means of horizontal lines. All above the first 
line thus drawn would be men of fine minds; all 
below the last line thus drawn would be men of 
primitive minds. A moment's thought will show 
that the essential resemblances in religious belief 
between all the members of the first group, even 



266 WORRY 

though their religious labels varied widely, would 
be far greater than those between the successive 
members of any one column, even though they all 
agreed so far as the label was concerned. In other 
words, a Christian philosopher and a Buddhist 
philosopher are immeasurably nearer to one another 
in religion — as each of them is well aware — than 
a Christian philosopher and an illiterate, mentally- 
negligible Christian. For between the philosopher 
and the illiterate, of whatever creed, there is no less 
a gap than that between the thought of to-day and 
the thought, if thought it could be called, of two 
hundred thousand years ago. 

Now, what I desire to maintain is this, that if 
surveying the whole of mankind we include in one 
group all that great majority which would come 
below one or other of the horizontal lines in our 
classification, we may fairly describe all these per- 
sons as professing primitive religion. The mere 
matter of the label which they affect will not con- 
cern us. The primitive mind must have a primitive 
religion. All primitive minds are alike, and there 
is thus only one primitive religion — a multitude 
of labels notwithstanding. 

The chain of causation is very easily recognised ; 
the first link is the human power to " look before," 
exhibited in a being which loves life and happi- 
ness; the second is the fear and worry thus gen- 
erated. So far the factors are common to all men, 
primitive or progressive; but in the case of those 
whom we are now considering we have to recog- 



WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 267 

nise the great factor of ignorance. The unknown 
is the terrible; it is fair, though it seems hard, to 
say that the intellect or reason may practically be 
ignored in considering the psychical behaviour of 
the lowest orders of man, including what we are 
pleased to call civilised man. Amongst the rude 
majority there may certainly be intelligence enough 
for the purposes of reading and writing and a little 
more, but this is only a very subordinate and im- 
potent factor in the deeper life of such persons. 
Unguided by reason, they fall strictly into line with 
the primitive savage, and exhibit that " feare of 
things invisible," which is alike the seed of his 
religion and of theirs. This religion displays all 
the characters familiar to students of what is com- 
monly understood by primitive religion. This we 
may readily understand if we recognise that what 
we see before us is primitive religion produced in 
primitive minds in our own day in precisely the 
same fashion as it was produced in similar minds 
in the past which anthropologists are studying. 
Indeed any anthropologist of repute might do 
worse than devote himself to a systematic account 
of primitive religion as it is generated by fear of 
the invisible in the lowest orders of men and 
women as they are to be found in various classes 
of society to-day. It would be a matter of no small 
interest, thereafter, to institute a critical compari- 
son between the beliefs and practices thus dis- 
covered and the beliefs and practices of the rapidly 
disappearing Australian Aboriginal, the Kaffir, the 



268 WORRY 

Esquimaux or the Bushman. The differences would 
be of detail merely. 

I have used the phrase " classes of society/' and 
it is well to remember that the religious classifica- 
tion of mankind which I propose has very .small 
concern with the vulgar classification to which 
nearly all of us bow the knee. It costs me less 
than an hour and a half to accompany my wife 
to Regent Street on a bright afternoon, and there, 
in the centre of the largest and wealthiest city 
in history, the heart of an Empire which would 
scarcely notice the sudden addition to it of the 
whole population of the Roman Empire at its 
greatest, — there, where, if anywhere, the naked 
Australian blackfellow would furnish a study in 
contrast, what do I find? In a word, I find the 
most blatant and indisputable evidence that such 
a blackfellow — of whom we think as a curious 
survival from an epoch so remote that Rome and 
Athens and Knossos and Babylon and Susa were 
far more remote than we are from them — might 
strike up a friendship, based on community of ideas, 
with scores and scores of women in Parisian gowns, 
who would look at him as they would look at a 
baboon. True, there is little outward resemblance 
between a pretty Englishwoman, the product of 
dressmaking in Paris and manicure in Bond Street, 
on the one hand, and a naked savage with long 
black hair down to his waist, a flattened nose and 
a black skin, on the other hand ; but it is not phy- 
sical resemblances or differences that count, and 



WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 269 

sometimes one is apt to believe that the evolution 
of the body is a much easier and more rapid affair 
than the evolution of the mind, which we should 
desire to be concomitant with it. So far as phy- 
sique is concerned, there are aeons of evolution 
between the blackfellow and the Englishwoman. 
Indeed, he is in many respects much nearer to 
the ape than he is to her. 

But so far as mind is concerned they might 
walk down Regent Street arm in arm. It is true 
that she can play bridge, whilst he, perhaps, can 
only count up to five. There has been a superfi- 
cial development of the reason in her which op- 
portunity has denied to him; but that is a trifle. 
Get deep down into the mind of each, and you find 
the same outlook upon life, the same fear of the 
invisible. 

For witness take the sandwichmen of Regent 
Street, who shamble in the gutter whilst my lady 
walks on the pavement on one side of them or 
glides in her electric brougham on the other. They 
advertise the circumstance that this man and that 
woman are prepared to read the hand or to gaze 
into the future by means of a crystal or " psy- 
chometry " or the like. A study of the advertise- 
ments in the newspapers confirms the evidence of 
the gutters of Regent Street. Inquiry shows that 
persons who thus live on the fear of the invisible 
are able not merely to spend large sums on ad- 
vertisements, but also to engage luxurious rooms 
in parts of London where rents are monstrous, and 



270 WORRY 

to enjoy expensive holidays. They charge fees 
which the wealthy give only under protest and 
with many grudges even to the most skilful and 
conscientious of consulting physicians. 

True it is that the women — for they are 
mostly women — who consult these imposters, will 
be found at a fashionable church on Sunday morn- 
ing gracefully joining in the responses and enjoy- 
ing the music, which to the blackfellow, I grant, 
would be mere foolishness. It is by no means to 
be compared with his own tom-tom. True it is, 
also, that these women are included under the same 
label as St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and 
Newman and Kingsley and Canons Driver and 
Cheyne; but this only shows how much thinking 
naming saves. The woman whose fear of the in- 
visible, acting in an ignorant mind of low inherent 
capacity, causes her to reject the most attractive 
residence that is numbered 13, to consult palmists, 
to avoid haunted houses, and so on, may call her- 
self by the same title as the hard-headed " Angelic 
Doctor " of the thirteenth century. But her reli- 
gion is not really within aeons of his. It is primi- 
tive religion, the child of ignorance and worry. 
She and the blackfellow may clasp hands at the 
same altar. 

Now there arises at this point a question which 
must often have occurred to any thoughtful reader. 
Let it be admitted for the sake of argument that, 
under whatever name, the religion of the lowest 
orders of the modern mind is none other than an 



WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 271 

adaptation of primitive superstition. Let it be 
granted, also, that primitive religion as we see 
it amongst ourselves to-day is not really a product 
of education or tradition, but is really a new crea- 
tion of each primitive mind to-day as it was in 
the past. Now or then, here or at the Antipodes, 
given a primitive mind, ignorant of all essentials, 
placed in contact with Nature, with darkness, light 
and shadow, sound and silence — primitive religion 
will be generated. But if this be so, and further- 
more, if it can be shown that the religion even of 
intermediate orders of intellect is built upon no 
securer foundation, are we to accept the dictum of 
a recent writer — himself a metaphysician — who 
boldly declares that no one but a metaphysician 
has any right to a religion? 

This is a hard saying, and we cannot accept it, 
yet we must recognise the truth which the writer 
so forcibly expresses. It is the fact that the really 
vital and effective part of the religion of many 
to-day is a tissue of credulities and practices — 
whether or not introduced into one of the great 
religious systems, such as Christianity, is imma- 
terial — that have no valid origin whatever. Cre- 
ations of worry may take on a rational guise and 
may even effect an alliance with philosophic or 
logical systems, but they cannot be accepted at 
their face value. Truth is not so discovered; the 
origin of these beliefs suffices to damn them. 

As every one is well aware, there exists what, 
in academic language, may be called the pragmatic 



272 WORRY 

argument for religion. Readers of Prof. William 
James and of lesser philosophers will know what I 
mean. It is the argument expressed in the common 
opinion of men that " religion is a good thing for 
women and children "; whilst Tennyson expresses 
it more subtly in the line " Leave thou thy sister 
when she prays." The argument, in short, is that, 
whether or not religion be true, at any rate it may 
be tolerated, if not welcomed, so long as it proves 
useful. This covertly involves the argument that 
the false may be useful and raises indeed the whole 
question of survival-value, which I must postpone 
to a subsequent volume. It is possible here, how- 
ever, to reach a very definite position regarding 
the utility argument in favour of primitive or 
puerile religious beliefs or superstitions as they are 
seen amongst us to-day. 

My position is that, accepting for the sake of 
argument the utility doctrine — the doctrine that 
the thing must be accepted if it is useful — we are 
still able to condemn primitive religion as we see 
it in our own times. As we have observed, this 
is a product of worry and fear. It has little place 
in the minds of those who scarcely know such 
emotions: it is dominant in the minds of those 
from whom they are rarely absent. 1 If, then, it 
were possible to demonstrate that these supersti- 
tions — or let us call them falsehoods and be 
frank — did actually suffice to avert and relieve 

1 We may recall Pope's fine line about a god "such as the souls 
of cowards might conceive." 



WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 273 

the worry and fear of which they are the fruit 
— then, indeed, the utility argument would be 
applicable. 

But it is only too easy to demonstrate that these 
falsehoods follow the custom of falsehoods in that 
they do more harm than good. Primitive religion 
is certainly a product of fear and worry, but they 
are as certainly generated by it. The religion of 
fear produces fear. Ignorance is not bliss, for 
ignorance leads to superstition, and superstition 
breeds more worry and misery and fear than were 
ever produced merely by man's foreknowledge of 
death or his intercourse with nature. The story 
of Frankenstein is true — the creations of man's 
own mind are far more terrible to him than any 
reality. 

Sentences may be conceived and words written 
down and read, but fortunately the imagination 
is unable to conceive the whole horror and pathos 
of the unnecessary agony that man-made super- 
stition has wrought in the life of man. The 
powdered bones of the dead go to constitute the 
soil upon which the living tread, and as we con- 
template the emotions and the deeds of which the 
life of our ancestors was composed, we feel anew 
the force of Macbeth's tragic words: 

" To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow 
Creeps in its petty pace from day to day, 
To the last syllable of recorded time; 
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to dusty death." 

iS 



274 WORRY 

Fools, indeed! Scribblers have amused them- 
selves by calculating the number of hours or 
months in the life of an average man that repre- 
sent the time devoted to, let us say, shaving. But 
would not the world stand appalled if some one 
were to estimate in centuries or in hundreds of 
thousands of years the total amount of time spent 
by human beings — calculated and added together 
for each individual it would amount to billions 
of years — in praying for mercy to non-existent 
gods, in agony of soul at the anticipation of pun- 
ishments and tortures and unslaked fires which 
do not exist, never have existed, and never will 
exist, in murder and poison and actual torture 
on behalf of doctrines which every educated man 
of to-day knows to have been lies rotten from 
end to end, in sacrifice, sacrifice of life, of the lives 
of others, of sheep and cattle and children and little 
babies, demanded to appease the wrath of deities 
that were nothing; sacrifices, too, of slaves and 
wives and warriors sent after some Chief or King 
in order to serve his ghost ; or, most pathetic of all, 
the agonies endured by loving souls who have 
thought that those who were dearer to them than 
life itself had earned eternal doom by the infringe- 
ment of some divine decree — a decree made by 
men, and for which there is no " credible god " * to 
answer. 

Indeed, the truth is that wisdom alone is justi- 
fied of her children, and that superstition is not. 

1 The phrase is Mr. George Meredith's. 



WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 275 

Her abominable brood are things more accursed 
than any spawn of cholera germs. E pur si muove, 
I freely grant — the world still moves on. Time 
was when all belief was superstition, nor can that 
time ever return, but the fact remains that primi- 
tive religion or primitive superstition, the fruit of 
fear, abounds amongst us to-day and is none the 
less, but rather the more, hurtful because it is 
often found to be the essential creed of " those who 
profess and call themselves Christians." The bad 
thing is none the better for being cloaked by a 
great name. 

Here, then, is this fruit of worry and seed of 
more worry; what can we say to one who asks 
whether there is a remedy? The answer plainly 
must be that there is a remedy, and that it is the 
remedy which has already proved effective in ban- 
ishing such fears and worries and sources of im- 
potence from the lives of those who lead the world 
to-day. The remedy for superstition is knowledge, 
the remedy for nescience is science. The gutters 
of Regent Street bear witness that, despite all our 
boast of education and higher education for men 
and women too, we have yet far to go. Frankly, it 
ought not to be possible that a sane Englishwoman, 
living in London in the twentieth century, and able 
to read and write, should consult a palmist in the 
matter of her future. As Mr. Clodd remarks, in 
an image which — he will forgive me for saying — 
he could not have made more accurate if he had 
spent a couple of years in dissection of the human 



276 WORRY 

body, a man might as well try to predict the future 
from the creases in his trousers — creases in the 
trousers and lines in the palm are due to precisely 
the same causes — and for the matter of that I 
would much rather predict a man's future from 
the state of his trousers than from the lines in his 
palm, for whereas the latter are anatomical acci- 
dents with which his mind and character have no 
earthly connection, the creases in a man's trousers 
will at any rate tell one whether or not he uses a 
trousers' press, and from that something may be 
inferred. 

Palmistry, however, is only one leading example 
of many imbecilities. I will not venture to intro- 
duce parallels to it from so-called religious beliefs 
which are commonly considered quite respectable 
and conventional if not nowadays de rigueur. 

But ere we conclude this chapter we must con- 
sider the part which worry plays in the making of 
certain religious beliefs which cannot be called 
primitive — cannot be labelled with the hard name 
of superstition. Whereas the lower religions are 
the products of superstitious fear and, in their 
turn, breed more fear, we may distinguish the 
higher religions as those to which men are im- 
pelled by more reasonable fears. One could not 
well expect to get much good out of a religion 
which took its origin in the fear of shadows or 
eclipses, but the case is very different with reli- 
gious beliefs and practices which owe their origin 



WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 277 

to reasonably worries and reasonable fears. Hence 
it is that the value of religion for life is found 
constantly to increase in proportion as the believer 
rises in psychical development and in proportion 
as his religion becomes reasonable and his deity 
credible. 

It is not necessary for us to choose in illustra- 
tion any particular member of the group of higher 
religions, but we may profit, I think, by simply 
considering one type of religious practice, common 
to all religions, high or low, ancient or modern, 
and observing its character and value in various 
cases. Unless I am much mistaken this study is 
worthy of a separate chapter. 



XXII 
WORRY AND PRAYER 

There is no more common character and fea- 
ture of religious practice than prayer, and there is 
no better proof of the proposition that our judg- 
ment upon worry as a maker of religions must 
vary according to the psychical development of the 
religious believer in successive cases. Without con- 
fusing the issue by the use of labels, and without 
reference to any particular country or any par- 
ticular epoch, let us study the relations of worry 
and prayer according as we find them in low minds 
and in high minds. 

It does not matter whether we choose as in- 
stances of lowly mental development an illiterate 
peasant of our own time, a savage of our own 
time, a Babylonian of six thousand years ago, or 
a child of any race or time. In all these cases we 
find certain primitive religious ideas, generated by 
worry concerning the unknown and the future or, 
in the phrase of Hobbes, by " feare of the invis- 
ible." In all such instances the practice of prayer 
is witnessed, and in all such instances the prayer 
is concerned with events which fall within the 



WORRY AND PRAYER 279 

sphere of natural causation, but which, by the 
primitive mind, are not recognised to do so; and 
in all such cases the prayer is directed to a being 
or person or deity or god who does not exist. 
There are thus two tremendous futilities involved 
in each case, and these are worthy of closer 
consideration. 

It is recognised by us that there are certain 
things about which it is idle to pray. No one 
prays that the sun shall not set. We realise that 
that event is within the sphere of natural causa- 
tion and that supernatural interference with it is 
not to be expected. We still pray for fine weather 
or for rain, in our churches, but that is merely 
because meteorology is a backward science. Those 
who study the subject know that the weather is as 
definitely determined by natural causes as the fall 
of an unsupported object to the earth or the suc- 
cession of night and day. 

But the fears and cares and worries of the lowly 
mind are all concerned with these objective things, 
— questions of weather or of health or of material 
success. The Roman Catholic child is taught to 
pray to St. Anthony when it has lost anything, 
and is worried about that, and the intercession of 
saints and angels is constantly besought on behalf 
of mundane, material circumstances which are as 
definitely determined by natural law as the seasons 
or the tides. 

Similarly with the case of many natural phe- 
nomena which excite fear in the mind of the savage 



280 WORRY 

or the child or the illiterate. 1 Prayer will not 
arrest a thunder storm nor hasten nor avert an 
eclipse. In short, it is coming to be recognised by 
all who have had anything worth calling an edu- 
cation that within the sphere of natural causation 
— of events outside the self — prayer has no place. 
But it is entirely with such events that the prayer 
of the primitive-minded in all ages and places is 
concerned. We conclude, therefore, that religious 
systems generated by the desires and fears of primi- 
tive folk are unlikely to be of any substantial value 
for life. Indeed they have been of far less than 
no value, so far as happiness is concerned, and may 
be regarded with respect by the sociologist only 
in so far as he can recognise them to have been 
of some disciplinary value in lowly stages of 
civilisation. 

But as man reaches higher levels, his concerns 
become less material and more spiritual. The 
really worthy man is much more seriously and 
fundamentally interested in the state of his mind 
than in the state of his. banking account ; in the 
health of his outlook upon life, in the spiritual 
sense, rather than in the fatness of the oxen which 
his material eyes may see and may rejoice to own. 
Now let us compare the mind of a man and the 
banking account of a man in this respect. 

The primitive man, including the primitive part 

1 I use the word " illiterate " for want of a better. There are, of 
course, thousands of people who can read and write, the primitive 
quality of whose minds is in no wise elevated by the possession of 
those very mechanical accomplishments. 



WORRY AND PRAYER 281 

even of the highly developed man, must neces- 
sarily worry at times about material prosperity. 
This worry may be a cause of the religious prac- 
tice called prayer in many cases. It is true that 
only very small children pray that they may find 
a sixpenny piece in a pocket which they know to 
be hitherto empty, but though the prayer may take 
forms somewhat less naive than this it is substan- 
tially the same. This kind of prayer accomplishes 
nothing, whatever the colour of the suppliant's skin 
or the name under which he addresses his deity. 

Secondly, the prayer generated by these material 
kinds of worry is futile, not merely because it deals 
with things and events which have natural causes 
and natural consequences, but also because the 
beings to whom it is addressed do not exist. For 
thinking men there is no evidence whatever in 
favour of the existence of any kind of powers that 
interfere with natural causation. I am the last 
person to assert that there is no Unseen Reality, 
but I do positively assert that the seen and the 
temporal cannot be placed in opposition to the 
Eternal but are Its expressions. And we may 
assume that It knows Its own business best. 

But contrast the kind of worry that leads to the 
religious practice called prayer in people of higher 
psychical type. In the first place, a man of this 
type will find no occasion to pray about shadows 
or witcheries or darkness or the creases in the skin 
of his palms. These things inspire no worry or 
fear in him, and therefore produce no religious 



282 WORRY 

sentiment or practice. It is only primitive religion 
that worry about such things inspires. Yet, again, 
such a man is not found to pray to St. Anthony 
or any one else about a mislaid purse nor yet about 
an inadequate bank account. He recognises that 
material questions are not fit subjects for prayer. 
Material facts and, indeed, all exterior events, hap- 
pen in accord with eternal iron laws of which the 
law of gravitation is only one illustration. It is 
not worth while to pray that a valuable watch 
accidentally dropped from the top of a tower shall 
not fall; and all the material things about which 
primitive people pray are precisely comparable with 
this. On the other hand, prayer is a spiritual 
or psychical act, and it is therefore with the spirit- 
ual that its proper concern lies. Religious people 
of the higher type do not pray about their banking 
accounts, nor about any such material things, for 
these do not vitally concern them. The worries 
and fears and anxieties and desires of such people 
are in another realm altogether. They are con- 
cerned about weakness of will, lack of fortitude, 
selfishness, imperfection of sympathy, carelessness 
about the highest things, preoccupation with the 
material and the sordid, or lack of charity. These 
are the things which worry such people; these are 
the things about which they pray, and it is prayer 
about these things that constantly and triumphantly 
justifies itself. 1 

1 How } is not my present concern. 



WORRY AND PRAYER 283 

Thus, after all the hard and cynical things which 
were said in the last chapter about the kind of 
religion produced by material worry in lowly and 
material minds and about the disastrous conse- 
quences of such materialism, — for it is nothing 
but practical materialism though it assumes the 
name of religion, — we now discern that, in loftier 
minds which lead the inner life, there may be a 
noble worry about spiritual things which, accord- 
ing to the law that " like begets like," breeds a 
noble and spiritual form of religious belief and 
practice which in its turn is abundantly justified 
of its children; and he would be an ignorant and 
norrow-minded creature who was prepared to deny 
the proposition that the name by which the Eternal 
is addressed in such prayers — which are as often 
aspirations as prayers — is of little consequence. 
There may or may not be a Yahweh as he was con- 
ceived by the Semitic prophets ; there may or may 
not be a Buddha as his worshippers conceive him ; 
there may or may not be an Allah as the pious 
Mussulman conceives him ; — but the spiritual 
religion which, in persons of the religious temper, 
is bred of anxiety about spiritual things, does 
assuredly correspond to some Reality in the very 
heart of things, all discordance of labels notwith- 
standing. " By their fruits ye shall know them." 



XXIII 
THE FUTURE OF THE RACE 

Worry is, in general, a wholly futile and evil 
thing, but we have already seen that there is such 
a thing as normal worry, and we cannot fail to 
recognise that the reasonable anticipation of future 
evil, urging to efforts for its prevention, is a wise 
and effective means towards the happiness of man- 
kind. It is such worry that I wish to consider in 
this very brief chapter. 

Disease and sin and sorrow were accepted by the 
Greek philosophers and dramatists as necessary 
and inevitable " dispensations " of the higher 
powers; they might be illustrated or commented 
upon, or even fitted into a rational system of belief, 
but the idea of removing them was never presented 
to the Greek mind, — a fact which is seen to be the 
more remarkable and significant the more it is con- 
sidered. The conception of posterity, as a fact of 
the future, was recognised by them, as it has been 
ever since, but we may long ponder over the curi- 
ous fact that this conception, until modern days, 
aroused only a selfish emotion. The single thought 
seems to have been, " What will posterity think of 
us?" Another form of it occurs in the case of 
Francis Bacon, who left it to posterity to judge his 



THE FUTURE OF THE RACE 285 

case. No idea of a duty to posterity, no recogni- 
tion of the fact that the present is not only the child 
of the past but also the parent of the future, played 
any part in the thoughts of our ancestors. Their 
only interest in us was concerned with the hope that 
we would think well of them, — as if we had 
nothing better to think about, — and it may be 
presumed that the vast majority of our predecessors 
would have been willing to echo the characteristic 
reply of Napoleon, " What has posterity done for 
me?" 

In short, whilst our forefathers worried about 
many things, necessary and unnecessary, at least 
they never worried themselves with worry about 
us! 

The thought of our duty to the future is indeed 
characteristic of our time ; and it has added a new 
and subtler cause of worry to life in these days. 
We may still think of posterity's verdict upon us, 
but we recognise that our only warrant for doing 
so is that the thought may shame us into action on 
their behalf. 

The sense of our duty towards the future may 
take various forms. Perhaps the least creditable, 
though I am far from saying that it is not credit- 
able, is an interest in the future of the nation to 
which we belong, — a form of patriotism. The 
anxious patriot is a very interesting study. One 
would write of this kind of worry with more respect 
were it not that, as a rule, this form of patriotism 
is ill-directed, either owing to defective knowledge, 



286 WORRY 

as in the case of those who think that the national 
stock is degenerating; to defective recognition of 
the effects of age, as in the case of the laudator 
temporis acti, who thinks that everything is going 
to the dogs because things are not done exactly as 
they were when he was young ; or to defects in the 
moral nature, as in the case of those w r ho think 
that any decline in the spirit of militancy presages 
coming evil. But I have no space for an essay on 
the fascinating topic of anxious patriotism and 
worried patriots. 

A much higher form of a noble care for the 
future is found in the case of those who concern 
themselves with the immediately succeeding gen- 
eration, — the rare men and women, conscious of 
some mental defect or tendency towards disease, 
who deliberately renounce the joys of parentage 
because they recognise their duty to the unborn. 

Then, again, there is the sentiment expressed in 
a letter of Charles Darwin's : — 

" I quite agree how humiliating the slow progress 
of man is, but every one has his own pet horror, and 
this slow progress or even personal annihilation sinks 
in my mind into insignificance compared with the 
idea, or rather I presume certainty, of the sun some 
day cooling and we all freezing. To think of the 
progress of millions of years, with every continent 
swarming with good and enlightened men, all end- 
ing in this, and with probably no fresh start until 
this our planetary system has been again converted 
into red-hot gas. Sic transit gloria mundi, with a 
vengeance." . . .* 

1 More Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. II., pp. 260, 261. 



THE FUTURE OF THE RACE 287 

Such concern about the future of the race is not 
merely a form of worry new to our time, nor yet 
is it merely a new and elevated form of moral sen- 
timent; it is a force that makes for action, as we 
have already seen many other forms of worry to 
be. But in this case the force is to be welcomed, 
for the action which it induces is beneficent. Our 
children's children will rise up and call us blessed ; 
this very generation of ours will be remembered 
" to the last syllable of recorded time " as the first 
which consciously and deliberately made the future 
— the future which it would not live to see — its 
own highest concern. It is a truly noble emotion, 
well worthy of the being who can look before and 
after. 

Mr. Francis Galton is devoting the unchecked 
energy of his later years to the study of what he 
calls Eugenics, the possibility of improving the 
human race mentally, morally, and physically, by 
the selection of its best individuals, rather than a 
mere haphazard assortment, for the supreme duty 
of the continuance of the race. He suggests that 
a passion for Eugenics is well worthy of incor- 
poration in the religion of the future, and no 
thoughtful person will be found to question the 
proposition that our worry about the happiness 
and worth of those who are to follow us is a 
noble emotion, promising great benefit of the high- 
est order to them, and tending to elevate ourselves, 
also, in the scale of moral and rational beings. 



XXIV 
THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION 

In preceding chapters we have endeavoured to 
study religious worry — the mental distress of 
various kinds which is the product of various relig- 
ious dogmas; and secondly, the development of 
religious systems as the consequences of fear and 
worry. Here, however, we must approach the 
question on a totally different and immeasurably 
higher plane; from forms and externals let us 
turn to the substance and essence of religion. 

The great crisis through which many religious 
dogmas have been passing during the last fifty 
years is due, as the reader knows, to certain strik- 
ing developments of science. Not a few people 
" of little faith " have inclined to the view that 
men would have been much better without these 
scientific developments which, as they think, are 
worth little or nothing in themselves, and seem to 
threaten religion itself. At the other extreme are 
u many free thinkers whose attitude to the reli- 
gious problem proves how little sense they have of 
the deepest human needs. They think that a form 
of life, such as was religion in her golden ages, 
involving the concentrated interplay of all faculties 



THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION 289 

and impulses, can be deleted from life without any 
loss thereto. The whole spiritual life would suffer 
were such a form of it to perish." * Those who 
fancy, then, that science has made an end of reli- 
gion and those who welcome this supposition may 
be contemptuously ignored here. Their thinking 
upon the matter is as superficial as that of the 
theologian who fancies, or seems to fancy, that 
Christianity has no further message or purpose in 
the world if the first chapter of Genesis be no 
longer accepted as literal truth. 

On the contrary, science has done a great ser- 
vice to religion — in accordance with the general 
principle that every new truth serves all other 
truth — in causing it to examine anew its own 
nature, validity, and purpose in the world. The 
supremely great study thus indicated is now com- 
monly known as the philosophy of religion. It 
has lately been prosecuted by great and sincere 
thinkers in every part of the world where thought 
flourishes and is reverenced. Of these men some 
have been professed theologians whilst others have 
been psychologists or unattached philosophers. 
They include representatives of many different 
creeds and sects and they have obtained the most 
magnificent agreement as to certain fundamental 
truths. If we recognise that amongst these reli- 
gious thinkers are included theologians of all 
schools, philosophers of all schools, psychologists, 
sociologists, students of ethics and anthropologists, 

i Hoffding. 

19 



290 WORRY 

we may realise, perhaps, how great is the signi- 
ficance of this agreement. 

As the highest thought now sees it, religion is, 
in the first place, a thing that can never die out of 
human life. It is a product of the deepest and the 
highest in the nature of man. In all its countless 
forms, ancient and modern — forms even more 
various than are indicated by the differing modes 
of worship of the Roman Catholic and the Quaker 
— religion expresses some fundamental truth which 
would survive, though all past and present expres- 
sions of it should utterly disappear. I have already 
quoted from the latest, and, as I think, the greatest 
contribution to this subject, 1 and I shall do well 
indeed if I am able to direct any reader to feed 
his soul from the same source. Let us turn now 
to the historical facts of religion that bear upon 
the subject of this book. 

Our business is not to argue as to the truth of 
any religious dogma — whether of Fetichism or 
Methodism; it is the equally important business, 
in practice at any rate, of ascertaining what reli- 
gion has actually stood for in human life. We 
have already seen the dark side of the account. It 
may appear to some that the description of religion 
so called as a cause of needless agony of soul con- 
stitutes an appalling indictment against religion, 
but it is not such. On the contrary, it is yet one 

1 « The Philosophy of Religion," by Dr. Harald Hoff ding, Pro- 
fessor of Philosophy in the University of Copenhagen. (English 
translation, Macmillan & Co.) 



THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION 291 

more terrible illustration of the truth expressed in 
the Latin phrase, corruptio optimi pessima. The 
more utterly beyond price is true religion, the more 
disastrous are its corruptions; but if there is any 
clear and irresistible prophecy in human thought 
as we survey it to-day, it is that these corruptions 
have had their day; in the deliberate desire to 
hasten their end I have penned a previous chapter. 
Let us now, with a gesture of relief and disgust, 
cease to consider them further. 

It is, then, the historic fact, demonstrated by 
human experience everywhere and at all times, that 
religion, " pure and undefiled," can make the desert 
blossom as the rose, can conquer death and pain 
and sorrow, can make earth Heaven and human 
life Divine. It has done this under many guises, 
or in spite of many guises. If the reader dare 
question this, let him read the life of Buddha as 
well as that of St. Francis, and Plato's account of 
the death of Socrates as well as Bunyan's account 
of the pilgrims' passage across the dark river: 
" Then said the other, Be of good cheer, my 
brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good." Bun- 
yan himself, w T e may remember, died in perfect 
peace. Despite all differences of time and place 
and external form, differences of race and educa- 
tion, and outlook upon the material world, it is 
surely one and the same ultimate reality that can 
accomplish such great deeds. 

It is hard work reading much of Plato, and 
some of my readers may have made the attempt 



292 WORRY 

and failed. Let me then quote for them the last 
page of the dialogue (The Phsedo) wherein he 
describes the manner in which Socrates, its victim, 
made imperishable the history of one of the black- 
est judicial murders in history. Be it remembered, 
also, that Socrates was impugned as a corrupter of 
youth and as an opponent of religion ; but eternity 
is not on the side of the religions which such as 
Socrates oppose. 

After a long discussion about death and immor- 
tality, there entered to Socrates in prison the ser- 
vant of the magistrates, bearing the fatal hemlock. 
The narrator continues : 

" And at the same time ending his discourse, he 
drank the poison with exceeding facility and alacrity. 
And thus far, indeed, the greater part of us were 
tolerably well able to refrain from weeping ; but when 
we saw him drinking, and that he had drunk it, we 
could no longer restrain our tears. But from me, in- 
deed, notwithstanding the violence which I employed 
in checking them, they flowed abundantly; so that, 
covering myself with my mantle, I deplored my mis- 
fortune. I did not indeed weep for him, but for my 
own fortune ; considering what an associate I should 
be deprived of. But Crito, who was not able to 
restrain his tears, was compelled to rise before me. 
And Apollodorus, who during the whole time prior 
to this had not ceased from weeping, then wept aloud 
with great bitterness ; so that he infected all who 
were present, except Socrates. But Socrates, upon 
seeing this, exclaimed — What are you doing, ex- 
cellent men ? For, indeed, I principally sent away the 
women, lest they should produce a disturbance of this 
kind. For I have heard that it is proper to die joy- 



THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION 293 

fully and with propitious omens. Be quiet, therefore, 
and summon fortitude to your assistance. 

4 ' When we heard this we blushed, and restrained 
our tears. But he, when he found during his walk- 
ing that his legs felt heavy, and had told us so, laid 
himself down in a supine position. For the man had 
ordered him to do so. And at the same time he who 
gave him the poison, touching him at intervals, con- 
sidered his feet and legs. And after he had vehe- 
mently pressed his foot, he asked him if he felt it. 
But Socrates answered he did not. And after this he 
again pressed his thighs; and thus ascending with 
his hand, he showed us that he was cold and stiff. 
And Socrates also touched himself, and said, that 
when the poison reached his heart he should then 
leave us. But now his lower belly was almost cold, 
when uncovering his face (for he was covered) he 
said (which were his last words) : 

" ' Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. 1 Discharge 
this debt, therefore, for me, and do not neglect it.' 

" ' It shall be done,' says Crito ; ' but consider 
whether you have any other commands.' To this 
inquiry of Crito he made no reply ; but shortly after 
moved himself, and the man uncovered him. And his 
eyes were fixed ; which when Crito perceived, he closed 
his mouth and eyes. This, Echecrates, was the end of 
our associate; a man, as it appears to me, the best 
of the men of that time with whom we were acquainted, 
and, besides this, the most wise and just." 

Thus we see how, in the very hour of its appar- 
ent defeat by the forces of false religion, true 
religion triumphed. And though Socrates was 
murdered, yet he lives ; " he being dead yet speak- 
eth." True religion enabled him utterly to con- 

1 The sacrifice paid on recovery from an illness. 



294 WORRY 

quer and overthrow the worry and fear which his 
undeserved death and the apparent defeat of his 
ideas must otherwise have caused, and the fact 
that the account of his death will be read ten 
thousand years hence affords yet one more, proof 
of the great doctrine which religion upholds and 
by which it triumphs over worry and pain and 
fear and even individual death — the doctrine that 
no good can perish out of the world. 

A few centuries later the forces of false religion 
seemed to achieve a still more brutal and con- 
temptuous triumph. It is recorded that at the 
darkest hour the faith of the Victim almost fal- 
tered in the cry, " My God, my God, why hast 
Thou forsaken me?" Yet here also true religion 
triumphed. The Cross is raised on high, but where 
is the Roman eagle? 

Throughout the centuries true religion has sur- 
vived and done its beneficent work in its only 
citadel, the heart of man ; true to its own great 
principle that the good cannot perish, true religion 
has never succumbed to external influences and 
has never been even in danger. When Copernicus 
upset the astronomical doctrines upon which the 
dogmas of theology were based, true religion was 
unhurt; and in our own day it has nothing to 
fear from Darwin: 

" Truth fails not, but her outward forms that bear 
The longest date do melt like frosty rime, 
That in the morning whitened hill and plain 
And is no more ..." 



THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION 295 

There is some faith which does not fail and 
which, however its forms may change, no scien- 
tific discovery whatever can affect; what is this 
faith? 

In the great book to which I have referred, Pro- 
fessor Hoffding expresses the fundamental idea 
of true religion as the conservation of values. Stu- 
dents of science are familiar with such phrases as 
the conservation of energy and the conservation of 
matter. Hoffding recognises as the perdurable 
and constant element, which persists in all the vari- 
ous forms of religion and throughout all their 
various changes, a belief in the conservation of 
values. To do justice to his thought would be to 
quote his book from end to end. The serious 
reader will long be grateful to me for directing his 
attention to it. Here I must merely attempt to 
express in my own words what he has taught me 
and so many others. 

But in the first place let us observe an apparent 
contradiction; on the one hand we have the doc- 
trine that the fear of things invisible is the seed of 
religion, whereas now we are speaking of religion 
as having an optimistic principle at the heart of it. 
It is evident that we are darkening counsel by 
means of the words we employ. When we employ 
one and the same term for true religion and for 
false religion, apparent contradiction is inevitable, 
just as the false Ptolemaic astronomy contradicts 
the true Copernican astronomy. Nevertheless from 
the first the idea of the persistence, the indestructi- 



296 WORRY 

bility, the conservation of the good or the valuable 
— that which has value — has held a more or less 
definitely recognised place in religious systems, 
and the higher the religion the more clearly is this 
principle expressed. It has outlived the fear of the 
invisible. 

We are all familiar with the noble poem of 
Browning, in which that poet's religious optimism 
reaches full expression. Some such description 
certainly might be applied to the poem " Prospice," 
but that was written to the poet's departed wife, 
and though it is essentially religious, yet the truth 
of it is a personal truth and it cannot be used 
for the conveyance of a general lesson. The poem 
of which I am thinking is " Abt Vogler." I am 
surprised that Professor Hoffding has not quoted 
the poem which so consummately illustrates his 
own great doctrine. The musician, the reader 
remembers, has been extemporising upon his organ 
and has created Beauty, which is, of course, a form 
of the valuable. But he has ceased, and there re- 
mains no record of what was — " It is gone at 
last . . . and the good tears start." This distress 
at the apparent loss of that which has value consti- 
tutes the highest and noblest conceivable form of 
worry. All men in all ages have experienced it, 
and in deep natures it becomes a transcendent 
emotion. I have instanced one form of it by a 
quotation from a letter of Darwin in another chap- 
ter. Here in " Abt Vogler " is an illustration from 
the musician ; there, where a mother mourns over 



THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION 297 

a lost child and asks herself the meaning of it all, 
is another illustration* The same emotion was 
aroused in those who watched the death of Socrates 
and in the women who knelt at the foot of the 
Cross. There is only one conceivable tragedy, and 
this is it. 

If the reader desires to acquaint himself with 
the expression of this emotion in its most poetic 
form, let him read the first two-thirds of Shelley's 
poem " Adonais," where he mourns for John 
Keats, who " is gone where all things wise and 
fair descend." 

But vital religion in all its forms believes in the 
conservation of values. Let me quote from the 
two poems I have named the expression of this 
faith : — 

" There shall never be one lost good ! . . . 
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist ; 
Not its semblance, but itself ; no beauty, nor good, nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the 

melodist, 
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, 
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; 
Enough that he heard it once : we shall hear it by-and-by." * 

Now with this let us contrast and compare, for 
the contrast teaches a profound truth, Shelley's 
expression of his faith in the conservation of 
values : — 

1 Cf. also Browning's " Apparent Failure." 



298 WORRY 

" Dust to the dust ! but the pure spirit shall flow 
Back to the burning fountain whence it came, 
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow 
Through time and change unquenchably the same. 



He has outsoared the shadow of our night 
• ••••« 

He is made one with Nature 



He is a portion of the loveliness 
Which once he made more lovely 



And he is gathered to the kings of thought 
Who waged contention with their time's decay 
And of the past are all that cannot pass away 1 



The One remains, the many change and pass ; 
Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly : 
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
Stains the white radiance of Eternity 
Until Death tramples it to fragments." 

All these lines lead up to the sublime peroration 
of the last two stanzas, which I need not quote. 

I have cited two great expressions of the belief 
that there is something of the imperishable in all 
that is good ; but what is the lesson of the contrast 
between those expressions, which may be described, 
in the language of philosophy, as theistic and pan- 
theistic respectively? 

1 Cf . Wordsworth's expression of the same religious thought : — 
" There is 
One great society alone on earth : 
The noble Living and the noble Dead." 



THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION 299 

It is the lesson of all religious history, — the 
lesson that so long as men vary religious con- 
formity is as impossible as it is undesirable. This 
is a hard saying for the theologian and the dog- 
matist, who desires the aboriginal savage and the 
Teutonic metaphysician to repeat one and the same 
creed; but it is true nevertheless. Religion is a 
matter not of objective truth but of personal truth. 
If a man must express his religion truly he must 
be true to his own self; he will not then be false 
to any man nor yet to that man's religion. We see 
through a glass darkly — ay, even the philoso- 
phers amongst us. When we recognise that even 
the profoundest expression of the vital truths is 
only symbolical at best, we shall see that the phi- 
losopher is not so very much better off than the 
child, though this does not lessen the monstrous 
absurdity of asking the philosopher to express his 
faith in the same terms as the child. 

It may be answered that the substance of this 
religious faith must stand the test of science, and 
there will be many to maintain that in these days 
science has made impossible, save at the cost of 
intellectual chastity, any form of belief in the 
conservation of value, the permanence of the 
good. This view has been abundantly refuted 
by Professor Hoffding and others; but to state 
the grounds of that refutation here would in- 
volve a philosophic discussion which only with 
difficulty could be compressed into a hundred 
pages. I do not want the reader to take my 



300 WORRY 

word for it that that has been done but to inquire 
for himself. 

«. Whatever the form in which the doctrine of the 
permanence of the good be held, the result is tri- 
umphantly the same. When Spinoza's landlady 
began to have doubts about her religion, that 
mighty thinker and noble soul assured her that she 
would do well to hold to her faith. It effected for 
her, he knew, what his religion effected for him, 
yet probably no two forms of faith could vary more 
widely than hers and his. Blessed with this ulti- 
mate and final optimism, men and women in all 
times have, in a very real sense, conquered the 
world. All fears and worries and apprehensions 
and regrets and fretfulnesses vanish in the face of 
it. " The free man thinks of nothing less than of 
death," said Spinoza, whilst his own life proved 
how utterly true religion may triumph over the 
worries of daily life. He was cast off by his friends 
and co-religionists ; 1 he earned a miserable liveli- 
hood by polishing lenses; he died of a cruel and 
chronic disease ere he had reached his prime ; and 
the measure of his appreciation by his fellowmen 
may be inferred from the fact that his doctor cele- 
brated his patient's death by promptly stealing his 
watch — yet the exultation of his words never fails 
and will never be found to fail their readers. It is 
utterly different in expression from Job's " though 

1 There is sufficient irony in this term: As if the religion of a 
Spinoza could ever be one and the same with the religion of those 
who expelled him from the Synagogue ! 



\ 



THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION 301 

he slay me yet will I trust in him," whilst it is 
significant that both belonged to the race which has 
been endowed with a supreme genius for religion, 
and which no terrestrial circumstances have yet 
sufficed to crush — yet the underlying faith is one 
and the same. " To the good man," said Socrates, 
" no evil thing can happen." 



INDEX 



" Abt Vogler," by Robert Browning, 296, 297. 

" Adolescence," by Prof. Stanley Hall, 144. 

" Adonais," by Shelley, 297, 298. 

Advertisements, of quack medicines, 62 ; dealing with sexual matters 
condemned, 190-194. 

Alcohol, its effect on bees, 93 ; its effect on man, 93 ; its early use in 
Egypt, 94 ; its action on the mind, 94-95 ; its stimulating and sed- 
ative qualities discussed, 97-101 ; harmful use of, 104, 105, 106; 
condemnation of, 108, no. 

" Anatomy of Melancholy," by Burton, quotation from, 57. 

•' Animism, the Seed of Religion/ 1 by Edward Clodd, 257. 

Antipodes, 271. 

Aquinas, St. Thomas, 199, 270. 

"As You Like It," quoted, 177. 

Australia, aborigines of, 267, 268. 

B 

Babyhood, no worries in, 140, 174. 

Babylon, 268. 

Bacon, Francis, his attitude towards posterity, 284. 

Bain, Prof. Alexander, of Aberdeen, his childish conception of the 

Deity, 146. 
Berkeley, George, doctrine of, 230. 
Birth-rate, decline of, 162-166, 172. 
Bishop of London, on the falling birth-rate, 163, 165. 
Boarding-schools, condemnation of, 169, 170. 
Booth, General, 210. 
Boredom, discussed, 80-84. 
Boston, 264. 

Bradfield College, Dr. Gray headmaster of, 171. 
Browning, Robert, optimism of, 207 ; " Abt Vogler " by, 296, 297. 
Buckle, Henry Thomas, on Scotch sermons, during seventeenth 

century, 242. 
Buddha, 283 ; life of, 291. 
Buddhism, the teaching of, 203, 204. 
Bunyan, John, quoted, 291. 
Burton, Robert, his " Anatomy of Melancholy," quoted, 57. 

303 



304 INDEX 



Caffeine, active principle of tea and coffee, 101 ; stimulating effect 

of, 101, 102 ; justifiable use of, 106, 109. 
Cancer, effect of worry on, 41 ; fear of, 87. 
Carlyle, Thomas, dyspepsia of. 227 ; his " gospel of work," 234 ; 

quoted on industrialism, 237. 
Chaillu, Paul du, quoted, 263. 
Cheyne, Canon, 270. 
Childhood, worry in, 139; causes of worry, 140; ridicule as a cause 

of worry, 141 ; religion as a cause of worry, 142, 143. 
Chittenden, Professor, on digestion, 226. 
Chloral, habitual use of, condemned, 104. 
Christian Science, 11 ; progress of, 20; cures wrought by, 39, 52 ; 

influence on the medical profession, 57 ; doctrine of, 254. 
Christianity, its teaching on worry, 202, 289. 
Clodd, Edward, quoted, 257, 261, 275. 
Cocaine, habitual use of, condemned, 104. 
Coffee, see Caffeine. 
Confucius, teachings of, 262. 
Copenhagen, University of, 144. 

Copernicus, on the Dantean Inferno, 256 ; astronomy of, 294. 
Cowper, William, quoted, 182. 
Crete, palace of King Minos discovered on, 1 57. 
Crichton-Browne, Sir James, quoted, 157. 
Cynics, doctrine of, 204. 

D 

Dantean, Inferno, 256. 

Darwin, Charles, on the upbringing of children, 148 ; on facial ex- 
pression, 156, 158; optimism of, 227 ; his concern for the future 
of the world, 286, 294. 

Death, fear of, 242; physical aspect considered, 250-254; moral fear 
of, 254-256. 

Delusions, considered, 86-89. 

Descartes, on consciousness, in animals, 196. 

"Descent from the Cross," by Fra Angelico, 157. 

Digestion, effect of worry on, 33, 34 ; impaired by worry ; a case 
recounted, 129-137, 217 ; organic optimism dependent on, 218- 
229. 

Disease, fear of, 27 ; germ theory of, 27, 28; immunity from, 29; in- 
fectious, 30 ; organic and functional diseases described, 35-42 ; 
control of mind over, 44-46; optimism in, 221. 

Doctor, see Physician. 

" Dream of Gerontius," by Cardinal Newman, 254. 

Dreams, their effect upon sleep, 128. 

Drink, see Alcohol. 

Driver, Canon, 270. 



INDEX 305 

Drugs, increase in use of, 16 ; their effect on man, 93 ; alcohol, tea 
and coffee, tobacco, opium, 94 ; their influence on the mind, 95, 96 ; 
stimulating and sedative qualities of, 97-101 ; stimulating action 
of tea and coffee; 101-103; nicotine, 103; condemnation of, 
104, 105 ; justifiable use of caffeine, 106, 107 ; worry aided by, 
1 08-1 10. 

Dyspepsia, see digestion. 

E 

Ecclesiastes, Book of, quotation from, 204, 245. 

Eddy, Mrs , founder of Christian Science, 39. 

Egypt, early use of alcohol in, 94. 

Elgar, Sir Edward, his setting of " The Dream of Gerontius," 254. 

Eliot, George, her meaning of " other-wordliness," 248. 

Emotion, the cause of human actions, 11 2-1 13; of worry, considered, 

113-125. 
Epicureanism. 11. 

Eugenics, Mr. Francis Galton's scheme of, 166, 287. 
Evans, Dr. Arthur, his discoveries in Crete, 157. 
" Evolution, the Master-Key," 218, see note. 
" Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals/ 1 by Charles 

Darwin, 156. 



Fear, its significance, 2, 3; government by, 151 ; of death, 242, 249- 

256; as a maker of religions, 257; in primitive man, 261. 
Florence, 157. 

Founder of Christianity, quoted, 202, 210. 
Fra Angelico, his "Descent from the Cross/' 157. 
Frazer, Dr. J. G., quoted, 263. 
Fretfulness, in old age, 180. 
Fry, Elizabeth, 210. 



Galton, Francis, his study of Eugenics, 166, 287. 
Genesis, Book of, 289. 
Germany, high proportion of suicide in, 17. 
Gilbert, W. S., quoted, 126. 
" Golden Bough, The, 75 by Dr. J. G. Frazer, 263. 
Gotch, Professor, quoted on dreams, 128. 

Gray, Dr., headmaster of Bradfield College, quoted on boarding- 
schools, 171. 
Greek attitude towards affliction, 284. 
Green, Thomas Henry, of Oxford, quoted, 200. 

20 



306 INDEX 



H 



Hall, Prof. Stanley, on " Adolescence," 144. 

Hamlet, quotation from, 1, 8. 

Hanwell Asylum, 57. 

Happiness, the aim of life, 1, 8; true meaning of, 21, 22 ; gained by 
drugs, 98, 99, 116; the ambition of "getting on " as a means to, 
discussed, 122-125; man's desire for, 200, 201, 206, 207, 219. 

Harper & Bros., "Evolution the Master-Key" published by, 218, 
see note. 

Health described, 23-26; its effect on the mind, 224-229. 

Hegel, doctrine of, 230. 

Hibbert Journal y article by Dr. Gray on, 171. 

Hobbes, Thomas, the " Leviathan " by, 257. 

Hobbies, use of, 72-75; value of in old age. 

Hoffding, Prof. Harald, his work on the Philosophy of Religion, 144; 
his definition of religion, 295-299. 

Holiday, true meaning of a, 64 ; various kinds of, 64, 65 ; freedom 
from worry the essential of a, 66 ; rest not essential to a, 68 ; man 
not content with doing nothing, 69 ; physical recreation, 70 ; 
working for fun, 71 ; the use of hobby-hunting, 72-75; as a pres- 
ervation of mental health, 79, 214. 

Howard, John, 210. 

Hunter, John, quoted, 58. 

Huxley, Prof. T. H., quoted, 190, 259. 

Hypnotism discussed, 60. 

Hypochondria, 60, 61 ; its effect on the lines of the face, 157. 

Hysteria, worry as a cause of, 19; described, 37-42; persistent, 134. 



I 

"In Memoriam," by Tennyson, quoted, 197. 

" Influence of the Mind upon the Body in Health and Disease, 
The " by Dr. Hack Tuke, 57. 

Insanity, causes of, 13 ; increase of, 14; " borderland cases" of, 15; 
causes of, 76, 77 ; its relation to sleeplessness, 77,78; melancholia 
and delusions considered, 86-92 ; erroneous ideas of, 112. 

Insomnia, see Sleeplessness. 

Italy, low proportion of suicide in, 17. 



j 

James, Prof. William, his book on " The Varieties of Religious Ex- 
perience," 144, 272. 
Japan, birth-rate in, 163; materialism in, 231. , 
Job, religion of, 300. 
Julius Caesar, quotation from, 255. 



INDEX 307 



K 



Keats, John, quoted, 205; Shelley's poem to, 297, 298. 

Kensington, birth-rate of, 164. 

Kingsley, Charles, 270. 

Kipling, Rudyard, 239. 

Knossos, 268. 

Kola nut, caffeine the active principle of, 101. 



Leibnitz, optimism of, 207. 

" Leviathan/' the, by T. Hobbes, 257. 

Lewes, G. H., Biographical History of Philosophy by, 204. 

Lourdes, the cures of, 39. 

" Lucy," Wordsworth's poems on, 159. 

M 

Macbeth, quoted, 273. 

Manning, Cardinal, on the attention paid earthly condition, 248, 249. 

Mate or Paraguay tea, 101. 

Materialism, 1 1 ; philosophic, defined, 230 ; evils of practical, con- 
sidered, 231-239. 

Melancholia discussed, 85, 90, 91 ; its effect on the lines of the face, 
157 : Cowper, a victim of, 182 ; religious, 228. 

Meredith, George, quoted, 264, 274, see note. 

Metchnikoff, Professor, on immunity from disease, 29. 

Mind, influence of the, on the body, discussed, 57, 62 ; influence of 
worry on, 63-79 ; effect of alcohol on, 94-99 ; its effect on the 
body, 132, 134, 135, 137, inherent predisposition of the, 220; 
influence of health on the, 224-229. 

Minos, King, palace of, discovered, 157. 

Morphia, its action on the mind, 94 ; sedative qualities of, 98, 102 ; 
condemnation of, 108. 

Motherhood, duties of, 168, 173. 

N 

Napoleon, quoted, 285. 

Nervous system, described, 35, 52 ; impaired, 127-131. 

Neurasthenia, caused by worry, 42. 

Newman, Cardinal, his " Dream of Gerontius," 254, 270. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 126. 

Nicotine, varying effects of, 103. 

Nightingale, Florence, 210. 

Nirvana, doctrine -of, 203, 204. 

Nordau, Dr. Max, on nervous diseases, 12. 

Nurse, importance of personality of the, 44, 52, 53. 



308 INDEX 



O 

Occultism, II. 

" Ode to a Nightingale," by Keats, 205, see note. 

Old age, worry in, 174; serene, 175; change in type of, 177; re- 
ligious worry in, 180; fretfulness in, 181 ; value of hobbies in 
182 ; needs of, 185; care of, 186. 

Opium, see Morphia. 

Optimism, 207; organic, discussed, 218-229. 

Osier, Professor, of Oxford, quoted upon pain of death, 252, 253. 

Oxford, 252. 



Paget, Sir James, quoted on hysteria, 19. 

" Paradise Lost," quotation from, 8. 

Paraldehyde, habitual use of, condemned, 104. 

Pavlov (or Pawlow), Professor, of Military Academy of Medicine, 

St. Petersburg, 54. 
Pessimism, physical causes of, 215. 
Petronius Arbiter, quoted, 256, 257. 
" Phaedo, The," quotation from, 292. 
Philadelphia, 57. 
Physician, importance of the personality of the, 44-47 ; manner of 

the successful, 48-52 ; power of suggestion, 52 ; his influence in 

cases of hypochondria, 61. 
Plato on the death of Socrates, 291-293. 
Pope, quoted, 198 ; optimism of, 207. 
Prayer considered, 278; for material things, 280; for spiritual 

things, 282. 
Primitive man, religion of, 260-262 ; prayers of, 280. 
Proverbs, quotation from, 8. 
Psychology, see Mind. 
Psycho-Therapeutics, 1 1 . 



Quietism, 210. 



Q 



Regent street, different types to be seen in, 269. 

Regret, in old age, 175, 181. 

Religion, 2; its deterrent effects on suicide, 16, 17; its relation to 
worry, 20, 21 ; as a cause of worry in childhood, 142-152 ; melan- 
cholia caused by, 228 ; its relation to worry, 249 ; retrospective 
worry, 243; its doctrine on past sin and retribution, considered, 
244-249 ; moral fear of death, 249-256 ; made by fear, 257 ; in 
primitive man, 260 ; ancestor-worship, 261 ; fear of the invisible 
in primitive and modern man considered, 263-277 ; essence of, 



INDEX 309 

288 ; philosophy of, 289 ; utility of, 291-294 ; Professor H off ding's 

definition of, considered, 295-301. 
Retreat, The York, asylum for insane, Dr. Tuke's connection with, 

57 ; humane treatment at, 88. 
Ridicule, child's fear of, 141, 142. 
Rome, 268. 

Rosebury, Lord, comment on speech of, 92. 
Ruskin, John, his denunciation of railways, 231. 
Russia, birth-rate in, 163. 



Schofield, Dr., quoted on the effect of worry on cancer, 18. 

Scotland, sermons in, 242. 

Schubert, hampered by worry, 114. 

Self-consciousness, evils of, 8, 9, 35 ; in childhood, 139-142 ; as dis- 
tinguishing quality of man, 196 ; deferred, 197 ; popular meaning 
of, 199 ; as prime condition of worry, 200, 201 ; ci« e and worry 
inseparable from, 205. 

11 Self Help," by Dr. Samuel Smiles, 122. 

Servants, worry about, 160. 

Sex, effect of worry on, discussed, 189-194. 

Shakespeare, his use of the word apprehension, 1 ; quoted, 199, 237 ; 
quotation from Julius Caesar, 255; quotation from "As you Like 

n," 177. 

" She was a Phantom of Delight," quoted, 177. 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, quoted, 198, 232 ; " Adonais," by, 297, 298. 

Sleeplessness, cause of, 19; effect of worry on, 32, 33; its relation 
to insanity, 77, 78 ; effect of tea on, 102; discussed, 216-218. 

Smiles, Dr. Samuel, on "getting on," 122. 

Socrates, faith of, 2 ; optimism of, 207, 208 ; death of, 291-293 ; 
quoted, 301. 

Spencer, Herbert, quoted, 125; on beauty, 158; "on complete liv- 
ing," 185, 187, 221; optimism of, 227; on industrialism, 237; 
quoted, see note, 241. 

Spain, low proportion of suicide in, 17. 

Spinoza, religion of, 300. 

Sport, 64, 68, 73. 

St. Anthony, prayers to, 279, 282. 

St. Augustine, 270. 

St. Francis, the " stigmata " of, 51 ; life of, 291. 

Statue of the Laocoon, 156. 

Stevenson, R. L., quoted, 15, 125. 

Stoics, doctrine of the, 204, 210. 

Switzerland, high proportion of suicide in, 17. 

Suggestion, definition of, 50-53. 

Suicide, increase of, 16, 17, 249. 

Sulphonal, habitual use of, condemned, 104. 

Susa, 268. 

Superstition, considered, 259-260, and religion, 263-277. 

Sydenham, clinical observations of, 12. 



310 INDEX 



Tanin, harmful action of, 107. 

Tea, stimulating qualities of, 101, 102; beneficial use of, 106 ; 

harmful effect of tanin, 107, 109. 
Tennyson, Alfred, quoted, 197, 198, 272. 
"The Happy Warrior/' quotation from, 176. 
Times, The, articles on insanity in, 14. 
Thoreau, H. D., 125. 
Tobacco, varying effects of, 103. 
Touissant L'Ouverture, sonnet to, 6 ; meaning of " agonies " in the, 

211. 
Trional, habitual use of, condemned, 104. 
Tuke, Dr. Hack, " The Influence of the Mind upon the Body in 

Health and Disease," by, 57 ; quoted, 59. 
Twain, Mark, on Christian Science, 20. 
Tyndall, Professor, quoted, 199. 



V 

" Varieties of Religious Experience, The," by Prof. William James, 

144. 
Veronal, habitual use of, condemned, 104. 



W 

Wells, Mr. H. G., 163. 

Whitechapel, birth-rate of, 165. 

Wcdsworth, William, character of, 2; quoted, 22; his poems on 
" Lucy," 160; quotation from " The Happy Warrior " by, 177. 

Worry, the effect of, 1-6; evils of self -consciousness, 8 ; its effect 
on suicide, 10; psychical strain, 12; insanity caused by, 13-15; 
increase of suicide, 16, 17 ; its effect on physical disease, 18; and 
sleeplessness, 19 ; its relation to religion, 20, 21 ; the negation of 
happiness, 22 ; a predisposing cause of disease, 31 ; of sleepless- 
ness, 32 ; and of digestion, 33, 34 ; functional nervous disease 
caused by, 41 ; its influence in illness, 43-45; control of mind 
over disease, 44-46, 53 ; its effect on the secretions of the body, 
53' 54> 55 y i ts effect on heart failure, 56; influence of mind on 
body, 57, 62; freedom from, essential to holidaying, 64-79; * ts 
relation to boredom, 80-84 ; insane worry discussed, 85-92 ; in- 
fluence of drugs on, 94, 96; action of drugs discussed, 97-104; 
alcohol both cure and cause of, 105 ; beneficial effect of tea, 106, 
107; alcohol productive of, 108, no; the emotion of, 113, 114; 
its evil influence on the will of man, 116; irritability caused by, 
117; worried business man described, 117; woman's domestic, 
118, 120; society affected by, 121 ; of " getting on" discussed, 
122-125; generalities unconvincing, 126; a case of, recounted, 



INDEX 311 

126, 127 ; dreams cause unrestful sleep, 128 ; its effect on growth of 
the hair, 129-131 ; its after effects on the mind, 132 ; results of im- 
paired digestion, 133, 134; external pretexts for internal causes, 
135-137 ; in childhood, 139 ; ridicule as a cause of, to a child, 141 ; 
religion as a cause of, to a child, 142-153 ; and domesticity, 154 ; its 
effect on the face, 1 56-161 ; about servants, 160; about children, 
163-174; about old age, 175 ; about religion in old age, 180; its 
influence on sex discussed, 189-194 ; self-consciousness prime 
cause of, 199, 201 ; teaching of Christianity on, 202; teaching of 
Buddhism on, 203 ; teaching of the Stoics on, 203 ; inseparable 
from the desire to live, 205 ; classification of, 209 ; unselfish and 
necessary, 210 ; selfish, 211 ; futility of, over past events, 212, 213 ; 
cures of, considered, 214; necessity of sleep, 216, 217; necessity 
of the "organic sense of well-being," 218; various temperaments, 
219; inherent predisposition of the mind, 220; optimism in dis- 
ease, 221, 222; normal and right, 223; ill-health cause of, dis- 
cussed, 224-228 ; religious melancholia, 228 ; evils of practical 
materialism considered, 230-239 ; religious, considered, 240 ; ret- 
rospective worry and retribution, 240-249 ; about death, 249- 
256 ; religion the product of fear and, 257 ; primitive man, 258 ; 
ancestor-worship, 261 ; fear of the invisible in primitive and 
modern man, considered, 263-277 ; prayer about material and 
spiritual, considered, 278-283 ; for the future of the race, 284- 
287. 



Yahweh, 283. 

Yonge, Miss C. F., quoted on suicide, 17. 

York, The Retreat at, 57, 88. 



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